Behind the Troglodyte Farm (c. 1853): Art, History and Details

Behind the Troglodyte Farm (c. 1853) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henri Le Secq (French, 1818–1882).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This large-scale print, exceptional for the period, belongs to a small group of photographs by Le Secq of troglodyte, or cave, dwellings in western France near the Loire River. Around the 1400s, the term troglodyte referred to groups of political activists who lived underground in order to avoid property taxes, which only applied to above-ground dwellings.

Object facts

• Title: Behind the Troglodyte Farm
• Date: c. 1853
• Creator attribution: Henri Le Secq (French, 1818–1882)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: salted paper print from waxed paper negative
• Dimensions: Image: 50.9 x 31.1 cm (20 1/16 x 12 1/4 in.); Matted: 76.2 x 61 cm (30 x 24 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2004.32

A detail from the museum

Trained as a painter, Henri Le Secq was drawn to the new invention of photography in the late 1840s, less than a decade after its invention.

Collection credit

Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.