Cleveland Museum of Art

Sky Study, Paris

Charles MarvilleLinkedCulture matchlcp-6145c6810e2f

Date: 1856–57
Medium: albumen print from wet collodion negative
Culture: France, 19th century
Department: Photography
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 154075

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

This view frames the city so that the dome of the chapel of Les Invalides—a retirement home and hospital for military veterans—dominates the skyline. In the 1850s, the light-sensitive coatings for photographic plates were incapable of properly exposing both earth and the sky in a single shot. Marville here set his camera to capture the dramatic sky and clouds, which meant that the city below, for the most part, became a dark mass of undifferentiated buildings. The scale, drama, and majesty of this natural spectacle overwhelm human achievements. Thirty years before the construction of the Eiffel Tower, Charles Marville made a series of views of the skies over Paris, some from various rooftops and others from his apartment window.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page

See at Cleveland Museum of Art

Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: John L. Severance Fund
Provenance: ?-?: Alain Paviot, Paris, France | ?-1989: (Charles Isaacs Photographs, Inc., New York, NY) | June 29, 1989: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH