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[Female Nude, Reclining, in Profile]

ca. 1853
Not on view
Between 1851 and 1855 Julien Vallou de Villeneuve, a student of Millet and a lithographer of scenes of daily life, costume, and erotica, made a series of small-scale photographs of female nudes that he marketed as models for artists; evidence suggests that they were used as such by Gustave Courbet, among others.


Despite a long artistic tradition and an obvious delight in the female nude, decorum in mid-century France required that the subject be removed from the reality of the present—shown in mythological guise (Cabanel's "Birth of Venus," for example) or as an exotic creature, distant and nonthreatening. The need to provide a legitimizing context for the depiction of the nude was particularly compelling in photography, and Vallou often appointed his models with the paraphernalia of the painter's studio—rugs, shawls, spears, beads, anklets, and turbans. His most successful pictures, however, are those least encumbered by artificial trappings; revealing more and borrowing less from painterly tradition, these are the most poetic. While tantalizingly real in both weight and texture, Vallou's reclining nude seems nonetheless to float in an indeterminate and dreamlike space, a crescent moon in a starry sky.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: [Female Nude, Reclining, in Profile]
  • Artist: Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795–1866)
  • Date: ca. 1853
  • Medium: Salted paper print from paper negative
  • Dimensions: 11.2 x 15.5 cm (4 7/16 x 6 1/8 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1993
  • Object Number: 1993.69.3
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

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[Reclining Female Nude], Julien Vallou de Villeneuve French, Salted paper print from paper negative
[Reclining Female Nude]
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve
ca. 1853
[Standing Female Nude], Julien Vallou de Villeneuve French, Salted paper print from paper negative
[Standing Female Nude]
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve
ca. 1853
M. Delaunay, rôle de Fortunio, dans "le chandelier"
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve
ca. 1853
[Reclining Nude], Julien Vallou de Villeneuve French, Salted paper print from paper negative
[Reclining Nude]
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve
1851–53
The Refectory of the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes, Charles Nègre French, Salted paper print from glass negative
The Refectory of the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes
Charles Nègre
1858–59

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