# Mother with Two Children

- By: Jean-Baptist Frénet (French, 1814–1889)
- Date: 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
- Credit line: Jo Hershey Selden Fund
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/2001.5)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2001.5/2001.5_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.