Dolmen, Cap del Puetch, Ariège, France (c. 1865–69): Art, History and Details

Dolmen, Cap del Puetch, Ariège, France (c. 1865–69) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Arthur A. Taylor (French, active 1850–d. 1873).

The work and its context

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

A British-born photographer, Taylor lived in Marseille and became a member of the Société Française de Photographie in 1860. Taking photographs in city parks and the surrounding countryside, as well as in Ariège and Seine-et-Oise, he often worked with the establishment G. Arosa et Cie in Saint-Cloud to produce his ink-based prints made from photographs according to the publisher’s unique process. This print is likely made from a shellac base, for Taylor wrote several articles for British and American photographic journals on a shellac printing process in 1866 and 1867. After printing, the images would be mounted onto a heavy card stock and sold to be collected in albums. Here, the subject, a dolmen, or Neolithic tomb, reflects 19th-century interest in distant history and early monuments.

Object facts

• Title: Dolmen, Cap del Puetch, Ariège, France
• Date: c. 1865–69
• Creator attribution: Arthur A. Taylor (French, active 1850–d. 1873)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: G. Arosa et Cie process print from waxed paper negative
• Dimensions: Image: 33.1 x 24.7 cm (13 1/16 x 9 3/4 in.); Matted: 45.7 x 55.9 cm (18 x 22 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1995.237

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.

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.