{
    "data": {
        "id": 439497,
        "accession_number": "2021.55",
        "share_license_status": "CC0",
        "tombstone": "Chemin de fer de Toulouse \u00e0 Bayonne. Pont de l'Aran (en trois arches de 17m d'ouverture chacune). Situation des travaux au 21 juillet 1861, 1861. \u00c9douard Baldus (French, 1813\u20131889). Albumen print from collodion negative; image: 31.1 x 43.2 cm (12 1/4 x 17 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, 2021.55",
        "current_location": null,
        "title": "Chemin de fer de Toulouse \u00e0 Bayonne. Pont de l'Aran (en trois arches de 17m d'ouverture chacune). Situation des travaux au 21 juillet 1861",
        "creation_date": "1861",
        "creation_date_earliest": 1861,
        "creation_date_latest": 1861,
        "artists_tags": [
            "male"
        ],
        "culture": [
            "France"
        ],
        "technique": "albumen print from collodion negative",
        "support_materials": [],
        "department": "Photography",
        "collection": "PH - French 19th Century",
        "type": "Photograph",
        "measurements": "Image: 31.1 x 43.2 cm (12 1/4 x 17 in.)",
        "dimensions": {
            "image": {
                "height": 0.311,
                "height_inch": 12,
                "height_inch_fraction": 0.25,
                "width": 0.432,
                "width_inch": 17,
                "width_inch_fraction": 0.0
            }
        },
        "state_of_the_work": null,
        "edition_of_the_work": null,
        "copyright": null,
        "inscriptions": [],
        "exhibitions": {
            "current": [],
            "legacy": []
        },
        "provenance": [
            {
                "description": "Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, Scarsdale, NY",
                "citations": [],
                "footnotes": null,
                "date": "?-2021",
                "sortorder": 1
            },
            {
                "description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
                "citations": [],
                "footnotes": null,
                "date": "June 7, 2021",
                "sortorder": 2
            }
        ],
        "find_spot": null,
        "related_works": [],
        "former_accession_numbers": [],
        "did_you_know": "The rise of photography coincided with the creation of the railroads and the modernization of France.",
        "early_education_description": null,
        "artlens_description": null,
        "description": "Edouard Baldus, the most important French 19th-century architectural photographer, here reveals the process of constructing a bridge. In 1861 he was commissioned by the railway company that owned the principal route across southwest France to document the region\u2019s landscape, towns, monuments, and railroad structures such as bridges and viaducts.",
        "external_resources": {
            "wikidata": [
                "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q107378549"
            ],
            "internet_archive": [
                "https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2021.55-chemin-de-fer-de-tou"
            ]
        },
        "citations": [],
        "url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2021.55",
        "images": {
            "annotation": null,
            "web": {
                "url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2021.55/2021.55_web.jpg",
                "width": "900",
                "height": "694",
                "filesize": "226769",
                "filename": "2021.55_web.jpg"
            },
            "print": {
                "url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2021.55/2021.55_print.jpg",
                "width": "3400",
                "height": "2620",
                "filesize": "2140985",
                "filename": "2021.55_print.jpg"
            },
            "full": {
                "url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2021.55/2021.55_full.tif",
                "width": "11846",
                "height": "9130",
                "filesize": "324488246",
                "filename": "2021.55_full.tif"
            }
        },
        "alternate_images": [
            {
                "web": {
                    "url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2021.55/2021.55_alt0_web.jpg",
                    "width": "900",
                    "height": "694",
                    "filesize": "132331"
                },
                "print": {
                    "url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2021.55/2021.55_alt0_print.jpg",
                    "width": "3400",
                    "height": "2620",
                    "filesize": "1332294"
                },
                "full": {
                    "url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2021.55/2021.55_alt0_full.tif",
                    "width": "11846",
                    "height": "9130",
                    "filesize": "324485450"
                },
                "date_created": "2021-06-23T13:33:51",
                "annotation": ""
            }
        ],
        "creditline": "Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg",
        "image_credit": null,
        "sketchfab_id": null,
        "sketchfab_url": null,
        "gallery_donor_text": null,
        "athena_id": 439497,
        "creators": [
            {
                "id": 214,
                "description": "\u00c9douard Baldus (French, 1813\u20131889)",
                "extent": null,
                "qualifier": null,
                "role": "artist",
                "biography": "\u00c9douard Baldus French, b. Prussia, 1813 - 1889\r\n\r\nThe large and regal prints made by \u00c9douard-Denis Baldus are widely agreed to be among the finest photographic images ever produced. After serving as an artillery officer in the Prussian army, Baldus left his native country for France during the 1830s to become a painter. He exhibited his paintings of religious subjects, portraits, and genre scenes in the Paris Salons from 1841 - 51 and was naturalized as a French citizen in 1849, the same year his interests turned to photography.\r\n\tCombining his training in painting with an inquisitive, inventive technical expertise, Baldus produced a body of work of exceptional quality and interest. His subjects included architecture, landscape, and engineering feats. In 1851 the Commission des monuments historiques selected him for the Missions h\u00e9liographique\u2014a government project that sponsored the photographing of endangered classical and medieval architecture in France. For this important series Baldus produced views of Burgundy, Provence, and the Dauphin\u00e9, and the following year he completed a commission for the Ministry of the Interior. In 1855 he began his photography of railroads, some of his most distinctive work. A copy of his album recording the line between Paris and Boulogne was presented to Queen Victoria. He also documented the flooding of the Rhone, as well as construction of the new Louvre and other Paris views.\r\n\tA founding member of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 h\u00e9liographique and a member of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 fran\u00e7aise de photographie (1857), Baldus exhibited his photographs widely in London, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Brussels, and Paris and won numerous medals of award. A master printer, he produced combination prints in the early 1850s, frequently retouching his images with pencil and ink. His best work appears most often in specially assembled albums -- such as Les principaux Monuments de la France reproduits en h\u00e9liogravure par E. Baldus, published in 1875 from plates drawn from earlier negatives. Today, his work continues to be much sought after and to set a standard by which other photographers are judged. T.W.F.",
                "name_in_original_language": null,
                "birth_year": "1813",
                "death_year": "1889",
                "use_in_caption": true,
                "include_extent": false,
                "weight": 1
            }
        ],
        "legal_status": "accessioned",
        "accession_date": "2021-06-07T04:00:00Z",
        "sortable_date": 1861,
        "date_added_to_oa": null,
        "date_text": "1861",
        "collapse_artists": false,
        "on_loan": false,
        "recently_acquired": false,
        "record_type": "object",
        "conservation_statement": null,
        "has_conservation_images": false,
        "cover_accession_number": null,
        "is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
        "impression": null,
        "alternate_titles": [],
        "is_highlight": false,
        "updated_at": "2026-05-29 09:00:52.355000"
    }
}