Mlle Perolie; Elise Parent
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 7 3/8 × 9 1/4 in. (18.8 × 23.5 cm) Album page: 10 3/8 × 13 3/4 in. (26.3 × 35 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.588.1.25
Art Historical Context
Step into the elegant world of 1860s Parisian portraiture with *Mlle Perolie; Elise Parent* by André-Adolpheugène Disdéri, a masterful albumen silver print from a glass negative, created in 1861. Captured at the height of France's Second Empire, this photograph features the poised performer Elise Parent, known professionally as Mlle Perolie, whose poised gaze and refined attire evoke the glamour of the theater and café-concert scene. Disdéri, a pioneering French photographer, revolutionized the medium through his invention of the carte de visite—a small, affordable portrait format that turned ...
About the Artist
André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri · 1819–1889
**André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri** (1819–1889) was a pioneering French photographer whose innovations transformed portraiture into a mass medium during the Second Empire. Born on March 28, 1819, in Paris, Disdéri pursued diverse careers in commerce, acting, and politics early on, while studying art amid personal hardships following his father's death, which compelled him to support his mother, sibli...