Kaalat el Athlit, Syria, View from the Seaside (1859): Art, History and Details

Kaalat el Athlit, Syria, View from the Seaside (1859) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Louis de Clercq (French, 1836–1901).

The work and its context

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

After fulfilling his obligation to a government-sponsored expedition to the crusader castles of Syria and Asia Minor, Louis de Clercq continued his photographic exploration of the Holy Land, moved on to Egypt, and returned to France through Spain. From the probably several hundred paper negatives he took during his extensive travels, de Clercq published a selection of 222 albumen prints, divided into 6 volumes, which were frequently bound as 5 albums, titled Voyage in Orient (1859–60). This carefully posed panorama of the Syrian coastline at Kaalat el Athlit, bathed in warm light and luminous shadows, records the sweep of space and rugged beauty of the site, emphasizing its geographical and topographical features. Interestingly, de Clercq’s use of the panoramas represents an impressive technical achievement, since the difficulties in mid-19th-century photography only increased when the negatives had to form a continuous image. His panoramas also reveal the period’s zeal to convey as much information as possible about the experience of a place.

Object facts

• Title: Kaalat el Athlit, Syria, View from the Seaside
• Date: 1859
• Creator attribution: Louis de Clercq (French, 1836–1901)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from calotype negatives
• Dimensions: Image: 20.7 x 15.2 cm (8 1/8 x 6 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 71.1 cm (22 x 28 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1996.254

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Clercq, and Rolf Mayer. Louis De Clercq: Voyage En Orient. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Edition Cantz, 1989.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Rare Korean Screen Painting, Important Baroque Drawing, Sheeler Drawing Join the Museum Collection,” October 10, 1996, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

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.