Mother with Two Children
Jean-Baptist Frénet (French, 1814–1889)
c. 1855
- Medium
- salted paper print from a collodion negative
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- Paper: 23.1 x 16.5 cm (9 1/8 x 6 1/2 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Photography
- Credit line
- Jo Hershey Selden Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
After anti-government political activity closed off his professional opportunities as a painter, Jean-Baptiste Frénet took up photography in 1850 and a decade later opened a commercial portrait studio. He preferred simple, plain settings and relied on sitters’ interactions to reveal their personalities and relationships. This family grouping, probably taken for personal pleasure, offers a sense of casual immediacy unusual for the time in both painted and photographic portraiture.
