DescriptionAlthough 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. Absent are the boudoir props, gaudy jewelry, and provocative poses typical of hand-colored pornographic daguerreotypes and the stiffly held classical poses of photographic "academies" ostensibly intended for artists as substitutes for the live model. Instead, Moulin depicted these two young women utterly at ease, as unselfconscious in their nudity as Botticelli's Venus.

ProvenanceMichel 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]

Additional DetailsTwo-thirds plate; in original binding