Female Peasant Carrying a Basket and Hay (c. 1870): Art, History and Details

Female Peasant Carrying a Basket and Hay (c. 1870) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Auguste Giraudon (French).

The work and its context

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

During the 1870s, Giraudon commissioned one or more artists—probably a French painter who wished to remain anonymous—to create photographs of peasants. Now called Giraudon’s Artist, this photographer was one of the few in the 1800s specializing in rural figure studies created for use by artists. The images were likely taken near Barbizon, a destination popular with artists who wanted to work from nature. The artistry of these images derives from their skillful use of light, ability to render a subject in the landscape, and a perceptive depiction of human dignity.

Object facts

• Title: Female Peasant Carrying a Basket and Hay
• Date: c. 1870
• Creator attribution: Auguste Giraudon (French)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 17.2 x 11.1 cm (6 3/4 x 4 3/8 in.); Mounted: 20.7 x 15.8 cm (8 1/8 x 6 1/4 in.); Matted: 45.7 x 35.6 cm (18 x 14 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1999.27

A detail from the museum

Auguste Giraudon was an important Parisian publisher of photographs but not a photographer himself.

Collection credit

John L. Severance 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.