{
"data": {
"id": 160714,
"accession_number": "1998.73",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Portrait of Edmond Cottinet (1824-1895), c. 1848\u201350. Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820\u20131884). Salted paper print from a paper negative; image: 20.5 x 13.9 cm (8 1/16 x 5 1/2 in.); matted: 61 x 50.8 cm (24 x 20 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1998.73",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Portrait of Edmond Cottinet (1824-1895)",
"creation_date": "c. 1848\u201350",
"creation_date_earliest": 1848,
"creation_date_latest": 1850,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "salted paper print from a paper negative",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - French 19th Century",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 20.5 x 13.9 cm (8 1/16 x 5 1/2 in.); Matted: 61 x 50.8 cm (24 x 20 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.205,
"height_inch": 8,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0625,
"width": 0.139,
"width_inch": 5,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.5
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.61,
"height_inch": 24,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.508,
"width_inch": 20,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Printed on recto of mount: \"No.\"/ written in pencil 40f(?); written in ink 40f(?)",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 188432,
"title": "19th-Century French Portrait Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "19th-Century French Portrait Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 27-August 9, 2000).",
"opening_date": "2000-05-27T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 178867,
"title": "Drawn with Light: Pioneering French Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Drawn with Light: Pioneering French Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 26-June 16, 2005).",
"opening_date": "2005-02-26T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 197576,
"title": "France at the Dawn of Photography",
"description": "France at the Dawn of Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 4, 2009-January 24, 2010).",
"opening_date": "2009-10-04T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 286506,
"title": "Cheating Death: Portrait Photography\u2019s First Half Century",
"description": "Cheating Death: Portrait Photography\u2019s First Half Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 22, 2016-February 5, 2017).",
"opening_date": "2016-10-22T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Galeries Mansart and Mazarine, Richelieu, France, March 19 - June 16, 2002: \"Gustave Le Gray, 1820-1884.\" Aubenas, Sylvie. Gustave Le Gray, 1820-1884 (Gallimard: Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France, 2002). (Also exhibited at The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, July 9 - Sept. 29, 2002). Catalogue no. 58, p. 55, repr. p. 55.",
"opening_date": "2002-03-19T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "French private collection",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "A painter by trade, Le Gray took up photography in 1847 and became a master of light-filled landscapes and seascapes. His early portraits depict his social circle of artists and writers, including his friend and neighbor the playwright Cottinet. He is portrayed here as if in a reverie, perhaps composing a new play in his head. This effect is partly created by the low shooting angle and isolation of the subject in a corner between two bare walls, a rare and casual approach for the time. Posing subjects this way would become a standard ploy for the famed 20th-century photographer Irving Penn, although it is highly unlikely he ever saw this work.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60739897"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1998.73-portrait-of-edmond-c"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Hinson, Tom E. \"The Monet of Photography.\" Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 45, no. 4 (April 2005): 6-8.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 7",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2005-04/page/6/mode/2up"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1998.73",
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"date_created": "2007-09-28T16:29:52",
"annotation": ""
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"creditline": "Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
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"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 160714,
"creators": [
{
"id": 568,
"description": "Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820\u20131884)",
"extent": null,
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"role": "artist",
"biography": "Gustave Le Gray French, 1820-1884\r\n\r\nA master both technically and aesthetically, Gustave Le Gray (born in Villiers-le-Bel) was one of the most important figures in 19th-century French photography, bringing to the medium artistic integrity and visual imagination. Le Gray, trained as a painter, was exhibiting his work in the Paris Salons in the late 1840s and early 1850s when he became interested in photography. Along with Henri Le Secq and Charles N\u00e8gre, he was a student of Paul Delaroche, a painter of considerable reputation and ability who was one of the first to grasp the importance of photography.\r\n\tIn 1851 Le Gray announced his invention of a waxed paper negative, a significant improvement over earlier paper methods that was later adopted by Louis de Clercq, Dr. August Jakob Lorent, and others. That same year the Commission des Monuments historiques named him as one of five photographers of the Mission h\u00e9liographique, for which he produced well-known studies of army maneuvers at Chalons. Le Gray also worked with Fran\u00e7ois Arago, the scientist and champion of Louis-Jacques-Mand\u00e9 Daguerre, and later proposed a new method of toning prints, among other innovations.\r\n\tLe Gray was perhaps most admired for the effects he achieved with water and sky. To capture the subtle qualities of cloud patterns in some of his seascapes, he employed two negatives to produce the final image. His commissioned studies of historic monuments are classic examples of early architectural photography. In the early 1850s he worked in the Barbizon tradition at Fontainebleau and, in 1860, documented the uprising against Fran\u00e7ois II in Palermo. He was a founding member of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 h\u00e9liographique and the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 fran\u00e7aise de photographie. Despite his influence and artistic success, Le Gray left Paris in 1865 to become a professor of design at the \u00c9cole Polytechnique in Cairo. He died in Egypt. T.W.F.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1820",
"death_year": "1884",
"use_in_caption": true,
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"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1998-06-01T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1848,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1848\u201350",
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"record_type": "object",
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"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
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"alternate_titles": [],
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"updated_at": "2026-05-29 08:20:56.678000"
}
}