Figure 45: Contraction électrique forte des triangulaires des lèvres et des sourciliers: douleur et déspoir (c. 1856, printed 1862): Art, History and Details

Figure 45: Contraction électrique forte des triangulaires des lèvres et des sourciliers: douleur et déspoir (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 his experiments, to teach artists how to portray those emotions. The experiments were performed by applying electrical stimulation to a single muscle on one side of the face, so that the viewer could clearly see the impact of the muscular contraction.

Object facts

• Title: Figure 45: Contraction électrique forte des triangulaires des lèvres et des sourciliers: douleur et déspoir
• Date: c. 1856, printed 1862
• Creator attribution: Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne (de Boulogne) (French, 1806–1875); Adrien Tournachon (French, 1825–1903)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: Albumen print from glass plate negative
• Dimensions: Image: 23.5 x 17.9 cm (9 1/4 x 7 1/16 in.); Oval opening: 16.2 x 11.9 cm (6 3/8 x 4 11/16 in.); Mounted: 41.2 x 27.4 cm (16 1/4 x 10 13/16 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2018.7

A detail from the museum

Duchenne, a neurologist at a hospital for the poor in Paris, turned to photography to record the grammar of human expression.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Liberatore, Virginia, and G.-B. Duchenne. Performing the Passions between Classical and Modern Epistemes: Text and Photography in Duchenne De Boulogne's "Mécanisme De La Physionomie Humaine". 2002.
• Duchenne, G.-B., and R. Andrew Cuthbertson. The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression. 2006.
• Prodger, Phillip. Darwin's Camera: Art and Photography in the Theory of Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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.