Mlle Rousseau
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 4 3/4 × 4 3/4 in. (12 × 12 cm) Sheet: 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
2005.100.588.1.95
Art Historical Context
In the bustling world of 1860s Paris, André-Adphe-Eugène Disdéri captured *Mlle Rousseau* in a pristine albumen silver print from a glass negative, dated 1864. This-format portrait, measuring 4 3/4 × 4 3/4 inches, exemplifies the technical precision of mid-19th-century photography. Albumen prints, coated with egg whites for a luminous sheen and sharp detail, were the gold standard of the era, allowing rich tonal gradations from glass negatives produced via the wet-collodion process. Disdéri, a pioneering French photographer, revolutionized portraiture with his invention of the carte de visite—...
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...