Mullein in Bloom (c. 1897–1899): Art, History and Details

Mullein in Bloom (c. 1897–1899) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Eugène Atget (French, 1857–1927).

The work and its context

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

Atget produced architectural details, views of historic Paris, landscapes, and botanical images for use by painters and illustrators. Despite being a product of the 19th century, he was greatly admired by the avant-garde photographers of the 1920s. Modernists esteemed the straightforwardness of his photographs, while the Surrealists found inspiration in their evocative power. An artist or illustrator using this image of a common plant used in herbal remedies would have ignored the landscape background. But the Surrealists would have appreciated the unexpected, unintended surrealism of its odd juxtaposition of sheet, plant, and landscape.

Object facts

• Title: Mullein in Bloom
• Date: c. 1897–1899
• Creator attribution: Eugène Atget (French, 1857–1927)
• Culture: France, 20th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print
• Dimensions: Image: 21.8 x 17.6 cm (8 9/16 x 6 15/16 in.); Paper: 21.8 x 18 cm (8 9/16 x 7 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2007.26

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner. Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography : the David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. 2014.

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.