Although Moulin was sentenced in 1851 to a month in jail for producing images that, according to court papers, were "so obscene that even to pronounce the titles . . . would be to commit an indecency," this daguerreotype seems more allied to art than to erotica. Instead of the boudoir props and provocative poses typical of hand-colored pornographic daguerreotypes, Moulin depicted these two young women utterly at ease, as unselfconscious in their nudity as Botticelli’s Venus.

• Provenance

  Michel Simon, Paris; [Galerie Gerard Levy, Paris]; [Sean Thackrey, San Francisco (March 1978)]; William Rubel, Santa Cruz, California; [Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Fine Photographs, New York]
  
  

• Timeline of Art History (2000–present)
  Thematic Essays

  The Daguerreian Age in France: 1839–1855

  Timelines

  France, 1800–1900 A.D.
• MetPublications
  "Inventing a New Art: Early Photographs from the Rubel Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 56, no. 4 (Spring, 1999) (1999)