Portrait of Paul Chenavard, from the series "Histoire des Artistes Vivants" (c. 1852): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Paul Chenavard, from the series "Histoire des Artistes Vivants" (c. 1852) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Édouard Baldus (French, 1813–1889).

The work and its context

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

Édouard Baldus, best known as an architectural photographer, took this portrait as an illustration for the entry on painter Paul Chenavard in Théophile Silvestre’s History of Living Artists French and Foreign: Studies after Nature. This ambitious and innovative project featured lengthy biographies of contemporary artists illustrated with photographic portraits. Some entries also had photographic reproductions of the artist’s paintings—possibly the first time that occurred in a publication. The books attest to the importance and interconnectedness of contemporary art and photography in the mid-1800s.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Paul Chenavard, from the series "Histoire des Artistes Vivants"
• Date: c. 1852
• Creator attribution: Édouard Baldus (French, 1813–1889)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 17.6 x 13.2 cm (6 15/16 x 5 3/16 in.); Paper: 46.6 x 31.8 cm (18 3/8 x 12 1/2 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2006.164

Collection credit

Alma Kroeger Fund

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.