Unknown Male Sitter (c. 1860): Art, History and Details

Unknown Male Sitter (c. 1860) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Antoine-Samuel Adam-Salomon (French, 1818–1881).

The work and its context

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

Almost all early photographers relied on daylight as their sole lighting source. Adam-Salomon’s special lighting techniques yielded a rich tonal range and cast his sitters’ features into relief. A ground-glass ceiling in his studio offered an even, overall light that he accented with side light from glass wall areas that could be covered or filtered by curtains. Initially a sculptor, Adam-Salomon borrowed heavily from the conventions of portrait painting, aggrandizing his subjects by setting them amid luxurious objects and grand architectural features that may or may not have related to their lives. He produced such elegant, large prints in his Parisian portrait studio that he was able to charge four times more than his most able competitors.

Object facts

• Title: Unknown Male Sitter
• Date: c. 1860
• Creator attribution: Antoine-Samuel Adam-Salomon (French, 1818–1881)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 24.4 x 18.8 cm (9 5/8 x 7 3/8 in.); Matted: 61 x 50.8 cm (24 x 20 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1996.356

Collection credit

John L. Severance 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.