View of the Small Grotto toward the Deer Pond, Bois de Boulogne (1858): Art, History and Details

View of the Small Grotto toward the Deer Pond, Bois de Boulogne (1858) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879).

The work and its context

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

Although better known for his architectural photographs of Paris, Marville also produced magical landscapes like this image. Carefully composed, the asymmetrical composition presents a picturesque scene of a waterfall flowing from a mound of boulders in the Bois de Boulogne, a forest annexed as a Parisian city park in 1852. The sunlight filtering through the foliage creates a remarkable range of tonal and textural detail, along with lively abstract patterns of light and shadow. Trained as a painter, lithographer, and engraver, Marville took up photography around 1850. He was named official photographer of Paris in 1862 and documented the buildings and neighborhoods ultimately destroyed when the boulevards and open spaces of modern Paris were built in the late 19th century.

Object facts

• Title: View of the Small Grotto toward the Deer Pond, Bois de Boulogne
• Date: 1858
• Creator attribution: Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 25.1 x 36.4 cm (9 7/8 x 14 5/16 in.); Matted: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1989.27

Collection credit

James Parmelee 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.