Matra Reinhard (1868): Art, History and Details

Matra Reinhard (1868) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jacques-Philippe Potteau (French, 1807–1876).

The work and its context

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

These striking portraits of working-class girls were made as ethnographic or artistic studies of types. Potteau’s photograph was part of an anthropological series the naturalist produced for the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Employing the standard commercial portrait studio conventions of the time, he carefully posed his subject in an even light. However, instead of a painted backdrop, Potteau used a plain background as if shooting a scientific specimen. On the mount he recorded her biographical data: her name, that she was born in Paris to parents from Bohemia five years ago, and that she stands three and a half feet tall.

Object facts

• Title: Matra Reinhard
• Date: 1868
• Creator attribution: Jacques-Philippe Potteau (French, 1807–1876)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 17.2 x 12.3 cm (6 3/4 x 4 13/16 in.); Mounted: 37.5 x 28.2 cm (14 3/4 x 11 1/8 in.); Matted: 45.7 x 35.6 cm (18 x 14 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1999.114

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Tannenbaum, Barbara. "Cheating Death: A look at the first 50 years of portrait photography." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 56, no. 5 (September/October 2016): 8-9.
• Tannenbaum, Barbara. "From Specimens to Souls." Magazine Antiques 183, no. 6 (November/December 2016): 68-75.

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.