Cleveland Museum of Art

Mother with Two Children

Jean-Baptist Frénet

Date

c. 1855

Medium

salted paper print from a collodion negative

Culture

France

Department

Photography

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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. Frénet was one of the earliest photographers to take spontaneous, rather rigidly formal, portraits.

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