id: 160778 accession number: 1999.109 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1999.109 updated: 2020-05-08 09:05:50.780000 Woman in Lorraine Dress, c. 1860s-70s. Adolphe Braun (French, 1812-1877). Carbon print; paper: 40.8 x 29 cm (16 1/16 x 11 7/16 in.); matted: 66 x 55.9 cm (26 x 22 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 1999.109 title: Woman in Lorraine Dress title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: c. 1860s-70s creation date earliest: 1860 creation date latest: 1879 current location: creditline: John L. Severance Fund copyright: --- culture: France, 19th century technique: carbon print department: Photography collection: PH - French 19th Century type: Photograph find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Adolphe Braun (French, 1812-1877) - artist Adolphe Braun French, 1812-1877 Adolphe Braun, a French textile designer born in Besançon and trained in Paris, opened his own studio in Dornach, Alsace, before becoming involved in photography in the early 1850s. He produced several early floral textile designs that were published as lithographs. In 1853 Braun began work on a large album of some 300 photographic still-life studies of flowers, intended as aids for artists in the field of decorative arts. The work met with such success at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris that he left the field of design for photography. Braun's carefully executed still lifes are considered to be among the finest ever done. From the mid-1850s on, Braun's firm, Adolphe Braun et Cie., later headed by his son Gaston (1845–1928), became one of the world's largest studios and publishers of topographical views and of reproductions of works of art. In the latter effort, their importance was in part due to Gaston's success with the orthochromatic process, in which photographic reproductions retained a tonal range very close to that of the original work of art. Braun et Cie. were the official photographers to Napoléon III and Pope Pius IX. Their reproductions of works in the Louvre, the Sistine Chapel, and many other subjects in architecture, sculpture, painting, and drawing, sometimes using the more permanent carbon or Woodburytype processes, were offered in all sizes and formats, and became the standard in their field. The number of negatives taken by the Brauns or their operators was variously estimated in 1870 to be between 4,000 and 8,000. The Brauns were members of the Société française de photographie. Both were awarded the French Legion of Honor-Adolphe in 1860, and Gaston in 1892. T.W.F. --- measurements: Paper: 40.8 x 29 cm (16 1/16 x 11 7/16 in.); Matted: 66 x 55.9 cm (26 x 22 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Written in pencil on verso: "Braun / P 1757" translation: remark: inscription: Printed in black ink on recto: "LORRAINE" translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Cheating Death: Portrait Photography’s First Half Century opening date: 2016-10-22T04:00:00 Cheating Death: Portrait Photography’s First Half Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 22, 2016-February 5, 2017). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Gallery One Rotation, November 3, 2014 - April 21, 2015. --- PROVENANCE --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: This portrait depicting an ethnic type and costume—a woman from the Lorraine region—was probably made around 1871, when the Franco-Prussian War resulted in the loss of the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. The image would have resonated with emotion and political sentiment as well as folkloric interest for 19th-century viewers. Braun’s photography firm, one of the world’s largest at the time, was part entrepreneurial endeavor, part artist’s atelier. To remain competitive, he experimented with the latest technical innovations. This print’s exquisite detail and subtle tonal range are due to Braun’s use of a new carbon printing process. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1999.109/1999.109_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1999.109/1999.109_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1999.109/1999.109_full.tif