Plaster Cast from the Depaulis Collection (c. 1854–55): Art, History and Details

Plaster Cast from the Depaulis Collection (c. 1854–55) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henri Le Secq (French, 1818–1882).

The work and its context

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

Henri Le Secq was one of the most gifted early photographers to record architecture and sculpture. This stunning image is from a small, rare group of photographs of the collection of Alexis-Joseph Depaulis (1792–1867), a French engraver and collector of historic paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, as well as casts of ancient and modern objects. The depicted work is a plaster cast made from an early 19th-century neoclassical funerary sculpture created by an uniden-tified artist, probably French. Le Secq's exceptional talent for capturing the broad effects of light and shadow animates the figures in this complex sculpture, giving them physical presence. Indeed, the shadows are deep and diffused because of the texture of the paper negative and the lengthy exposure time.

Object facts

• Title: Plaster Cast from the Depaulis Collection
• Date: c. 1854–55
• Creator attribution: Henri Le Secq (French, 1818–1882)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: salted paper print from waxed paper negative
• Dimensions: Image: 34.8 x 25.4 cm (13 11/16 x 10 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 45.7 cm (22 x 18 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1999.7

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Major Benin Bronze Plaque, Rembrandt Print, Other Works of Art Enter CMA Collection,” March 12, 1999, 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.