The Sphinx
John Beasley Greene (American, 1832–1856)
c. 1853
- Medium
- salted paper print from waxed paper negative
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- Image: 23.2 x 29.6 cm (9 1/8 x 11 5/8 in.); Mounted: 39.8 x 56.5 cm (15 11/16 x 22 1/4 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
- Culture
- America
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Photography
- Credit line
- Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The son of a wealthy banker, Greene was an American but born and raised in Paris. At a young age, he became an avid archaeologist focusing on the Middle East. Before embarking on his first trip to Egypt in 1853 at age 19, he learned photography so he could accurately document excavations, discoveries, and inscriptions, but he also used the relatively new medium to produce elegant landscapes such as the view of Thebes nearby. Greene, who was involved in excavations of the Great Sphinx, died in Cairo in 1856, possibly of tuberculosis.
