Photographs
Mother with Two Children
Photograph
Details
- Author / creator
- Jean-Baptist Frénet (French, 1814–1889)
- Object type
- Photograph
- Date or period
- c. 1855
- Dimensions summary
- Paper: 23.1 × 16.5 cm; Matted: 50.8 × 40.6 cm
- Photo process
- Salted paper
- Studio or series
- Jean-Baptist Frénet
- Place of origin
- France
- Acquisition method
- Bequest
- Credit line
- Bequeathed by Colonel James Thursby, 2001
- Image rights
- Public domain (CC0)
About this object
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.
Materials and technique
Salted paper print from a collodion negative
Signature and marks
written in black on recto: "19"; written in pencil on verso: "50/2 [upside down]"; written in black on verso: "4"
