Landscape, Switzerland
Adolphe Braun (French, 1811–1877)
c. 1860
- Medium
- Albumen print triptych
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- Left image: 23.7 × 30.1 cm (9 3/8 × 11 7/8 in.); Center image: 24.6 × 30 cm (9 11/16 × 11 13/16 in.); Right image: 24.5 × 29.8 cm (9 11/16 × 11 3/4 in.); Each support ,approx: 30.5 × 35.6 cm (12 × 14 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Photography and Media
- Credit line
- Photography Associates Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Adolphe Braun pursued several paths to commercial success. A skilled draftsman, Braun nevertheless employed photography as a design aid in his wallpaper and fabric business in the 1850s, making photographic still-lifes of floral arrangements that were admired in his day. He then turned his attention to landscapes, and over the course of the 1860s produced large-scale commercial views as well as thousands of stereographs focusing on fashionable tourist destinations in Germany and Switzerland. (One observer claimed in 1866 that it was virtually impossible to take a step in Switzerland without stumbling upon a shop selling Braun's prints and stereo views.) It is unknown, however, whether this three-part triptych—including two figures repeated in each frame—was intended for tourist consumption. Braun in any case conveys here an Alpine pastorale, replete with a serpentine fence, grassy meadow, and snow-capped peaks.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
