Portrait of Baudelaire (1856–58): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Baudelaire (1856–58) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Nadar (French, 1820–1910).

The work and its context

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

Nadar made this portrait as a cabinet card. These slightly larger prints displaced cartes-de-visite in popularity around 1865. While somewhat more expensive, they were pursued nonetheless by those collecting celebrity portraits.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Baudelaire
• Date: 1856–58
• Creator attribution: Nadar (French, 1820–1910)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print, cabinet card
• Dimensions: Image: 14.6 x 10.8 cm (5 3/4 x 4 1/4 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2022.350

A detail from the museum

French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, who wrote scathingly about photography, was nonetheless close friends with the famed photographer Nadar.

Collection credit

Gift of Nina Rosenblum and Lisa Rosenblum

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.