Self-Portrait in Painting Studio (c. 1843): Art, History and Details

Self-Portrait in Painting Studio (c. 1843) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Camille Dolard (French, 1810–1884).

The work and its context

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

Dolard, a portrait painter, may have offered photographs to prospective clients of lesser means. In this image, possibly made as an advertisement for his studio, he identifies himself as a painter, surrounded by the tools of the trade. The coat and the hookah suggest an interest in orientalism, a fashion that occupied many mid-19th-century artists. A remarkable technical achievement, this whole-plate image required Dolard to remain motionless for well over a minute, at least 30 times longer than the exposure for the smaller plates in the case below.

Object facts

• Title: Self-Portrait in Painting Studio
• Date: c. 1843
• Creator attribution: Camille Dolard (French, 1810–1884)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: daguerreotype (full-plate)
• Dimensions: Platemark: 20.5 x 15 cm (8 1/16 x 5 7/8 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 45.7 cm (22 x 18 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1997.56

A detail from the museum

Many of the best early photographers were painters who put their training in figural arrangement, light and shadow, and composition to good use in the new medium.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Museum Acquires Major Chuck Close Painting, 19th-century Fire Screen, Rare Prints & Drawings,” June 9, 1997, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Hinson, Tom E. "Captured Likenesses." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 40, no. 5 (May 2000): 6-7.

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.