France at the Dawn of Photography

Special Exhibition

Sunday, October 4, 2009–Sunday, January 24, 2010

Location: East Wing, Photography Galleries

*Courtyard with Painters* (detail), late 1860s. Unidentified photographer. Albumen print from wet collodion negative; 28.4 x 38.6 cm. John L. Severance Fund 1998.176

About The Exhibition

Selected mainly from the Cleveland Museum of Art's photography collection, France at the Dawn of Photography featured 55 images created primarily during the 1850s into the 1870s, a period of innovation that roughly coincides with the Second Empire (1852–1870). The show complemented the major exhibition Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889 with a compelling visual record of France when Gauguin was just beginning as an artist.