Mlle Sanlaville
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 3 3/4 × 4 13/16 in. (9.6 × 12.3 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
2005.100.588.1.94
Art Historical Context
In 1864, French photographer André-Adolpheugène Disdéri *Mlle Sanlaville a poised carte-de-visite portrait that exemplifies the mid-19th-century photography boom. Disdéri, a pioneer in commercial portraiture, patented the carte-de-visite format in 1854—a, affordable photograph mounted on cardstock, roughly the size of a calling card (here, image 3 3/4 × 4 13/16 in.). This innovation made portraiture accessible to the middle class during France's Second Empire, fueling a craze where everyone from Empress Eugénie to ordinary citizens collected and exchanged these pocket-sized mementos. Printed ...
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...