The Royal Porcelain Factory at Sèvres (c. 1851–1852): Art, History and Details

The Royal Porcelain Factory at Sèvres (c. 1851–1852) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henri-Victor Regnault (French, 1810–1878).

The work and its context

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

A chemist and physicist known for his studies in thermodynamics and the properties of gases, Henri-Victor Regnault was director of France's renowned Sèvres porcelain factory from 1852 to 1871. He was also a master of early scientific, portrait, and landscape photography. Aside from a technical interest in its practical application, Regnault accepted photography as a means of personal expression. In this poetic image, the aerial viewpoint and soft light and shadow unite the strong, geometric forms of the town and factory buildings with the dense foliage of the surrounding countryside.

Object facts

• Title: The Royal Porcelain Factory at Sèvres
• Date: c. 1851–1852
• Creator attribution: Henri-Victor Regnault (French, 1810–1878)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: salted paper print from calotype negative
• Dimensions: Image: 35.1 x 43.9 cm (13 13/16 x 17 5/16 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 66 cm (22 x 26 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1995.76

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.

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.