Mother with Two Children
Medium
salted paper print from a collodion negative
Dimensions
matted: 50.8 × 40.6 cm · paper: 23.1 × 16.5 cm
Classification
Photograph
Department
Photography
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Jo Hershey Selden Fund
Accession Number
2001.5
Tags
male
About this artwork
After anti-government political activity closed off his professional opportunities as a painter, Jean-Baptiste Frénet took up photography in 1850 and a decade later opened a commercial portrait studio. He preferred simple, plain settings and relied on sitters’ interactions to reveal their personalities and relationships. This family grouping, probably taken for personal pleasure, offers a sense of casual immediacy unusual for the time in both painted and photographic portraiture.