Figure 32: Natural laughter by the voluntary contraction of the two large zygomatics and the lower palpebral orbicularis (c. 1856, printed 1862): Art, History and Details

Figure 32: Natural laughter by the voluntary contraction of the two large zygomatics and the lower palpebral orbicularis (c. 1856, printed 1862) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne (de Boulogne) (French, 1806–1875); Adrien Tournachon (French, 1825–1903).

The work and its context

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

Duchenne embarked on the first scientific, systematic exploration of the physiology of human facial expression and hoped, through photographs of the experiments, to teach artists how to portray those emotions. Here, he has photographed a subject’s natural smile and described the muscles creating it. In subsequent photographs, he used an electrode to contract one of the muscles that convey that same emotion.

Object facts

• Title: Figure 32: Natural laughter by the voluntary contraction of the two large zygomatics and the lower palpebral orbicularis
• Date: c. 1856, printed 1862
• Creator attribution: Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne (de Boulogne) (French, 1806–1875); Adrien Tournachon (French, 1825–1903)
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: Albumen print from glass plate negative
• Dimensions: Image: 15.1 x 11 cm (5 15/16 x 4 5/16 in.); Paper: 22.7 x 17 cm (8 15/16 x 6 11/16 in.); Mounted: 41 x 27.6 cm (16 1/8 x 10 7/8 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2018.9

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sobieszek, Robert A. Ghost in the Shell: Photography and the Human Soul, 1850-2000 : Essays on Camera Portraiture. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999.
• Prodger, Phillip. Darwin's Camera: Art and Photography in the Theory of Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Duchenne, G.-B., and R. Andrew Cuthbertson. The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression. 2006.

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.