[Classical Head]

probably 1839

Not on view

This luminous head seems to materialize before our very eyes, as if we are observing the moment in which the latent photographic image becomes visible. Nineteenth-century eyewitnesses to Hippolyte Bayard’s earliest photographs (direct positives on paper) described a similarly enchanting effect, in which hazy outlines coalesced with light and tone to form charmingly faithful, if indistinct, images. These works, which Bayard referred to as essais (tests or trials), often included statues and busts, which he frequently arranged in elaborate tableaux. In this case, he photographed the lone subject (an idealized classical head) from the front and side, as if it were a scientific specimen. The singular object emerges as a relic from photography’s origins and now distant past.

Artwork Details

Object Information

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Provenance

Exhibition History

Title: [Classical Head]
Artist: Hippolyte Bayard (French, 1801–1887)
Date: probably 1839
Medium: Salted paper print
Dimensions: Image: 6 1/2 × 5 7/8 in. (16.5 × 15 cm)
Mount: 13 1/2 in. × 10 13/16 in. (34.3 × 27.5 cm)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2019
Object Number: 2019.309
Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

By Hippolyte Bayard

In the same medium

From the same time and place

[Still Life with Statuary], Hippolyte Bayard French, Albumen silver print from glass negative — [Still Life with Statuary]
Hippolyte Bayard
Early 1850s

Ceramic Horn, Glazed pottery, French — Ceramic Horn
French
late 18th or early 19th century

Pierrot Laughing, Nadar French, Gelatin-coated salted paper print (vernis-cuir) — Pierrot Laughing
Nadar
Adrien Tournachon
Person in Photograph Jean-Charles Deburau
1855

[Windmills, Montmartre], Hippolyte Bayard French, Salted paper print — [Windmills, Montmartre]
Hippolyte Bayard
1839

Moulin Rouge: La Goulue, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec French, Lithograph printed in four colors; three sheets of wove paper — Moulin Rouge: La Goulue
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Printer Affiches Américaines, Charles Lévy
1891

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