Fountain of Notre-Dame at Saint-Brieuc, Brittany (c. 1853): Art, History and Details

Fountain of Notre-Dame at Saint-Brieuc, Brittany (c. 1853) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Louis-Rémy Robert (French, 1811–1882).

The work and its context

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

In the early 1850s, Robert made a series of photographs that would be copied in lithography by Emile van Marcke, an accomplished artist who worked at the Sèvres factory with Robert at this time. Robert’s photographic journey captured seven sites—all featuring medieval architecture—in a small section along the northern coast of Brittany. For this picturesque view, he included the entire building, a small 15th-century Gothic pavilion erected over the fountain of Notre-Dame of Saint-Brieuc and whose square façade was positioned on a slight diagonal. Robert provided a sense of place by including a portion of the 19th-century chapel behind it, as well as flanking trees and a path leading out of the composition. For this reason, he may have also added a seated woman, dressed in traditional Breton costume, under the frontal arch. Due to the required length of exposure, the movement of the trees was recorded which, along with broad areas of bright light and dark shadows, provides a strong sense of atmosphere.

Object facts

• Title: Fountain of Notre-Dame at Saint-Brieuc, Brittany
• Date: c. 1853
• Creator attribution: Louis-Rémy Robert (French, 1811–1882)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: salted paper print from calotype negative
• Dimensions: Image: 32.2 x 26.1 cm (12 11/16 x 10 1/4 in.); Paper: 34.6 x 26.8 cm (13 5/8 x 10 9/16 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1984.17

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1984.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 2 (April 1985): 163–207.
• 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.