This album is an excellent example of the type of photography produced in the nineteenth century as an aid to artists in the study of contour, modeling, and proportion, and as a vocabulary of expression, gesture, and pose sanctioned by the art of antiquity and the Old Masters. Groupings representing Cain and Abel, the Drunken Silenus, Hercules and Antaeus, the Dying Gaul, the Cnidian Aphrodite, and others are recognizable among the photographs. Single prints showing sixteen small images, such as the page shown here, served as a type of stock catalogue, allowing clients to survey a broad range of possible poses and order larger prints of those which best served their needs.
