Mount Maudit, Savoy (1860): Art, History and Details

Mount Maudit, Savoy (1860) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Auguste-Rosalie Bisson (French, 1826–1900); Louis-Auguste Bisson (French, 1814–1876).

The work and its context

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

Many major peaks in the Alps were first summited in the 1850s and 1860s, which aroused public interest in the mountains and created a demand for images of them. The Bisson brothers’ photograph of Mount Maudit—which translates as “cursed mountain”—makes the 14,649-foot peak seem inaccessible. In fact, it was not summited until 1878. Photographing at high altitudes necessitated climbing while carrying heavy equipment, including large glass plates and a portable darkroom, and required extraordinary technical prowess and speed in working with the chemicals at low temperatures.

Object facts

• Title: Mount Maudit, Savoy
• Date: 1860
• Creator attribution: Auguste-Rosalie Bisson (French, 1826–1900); Louis-Auguste Bisson (French, 1814–1876)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 23.2 x 39.2 cm (9 1/8 x 15 7/16 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1985.94

Collection credit

James Parmelee Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.