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Mother with Two Children
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
After anti-government political activity closed off his professional opportunities as a painter, Jean-Baptiste Frénet took up photography in 1850 and a decade later opened a commercial portrait studio. He preferred simple, plain settings and relied on sitters’ interactions to reveal their personalities and relationships. This family grouping, probably taken for personal pleasure, offers a sense of casual immediacy unusual for the time in both painted and photographic portraiture.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineMother with Two Children, c. 1855. Jean-Baptist Frénet (French, 1814–1889). Salted paper print from a collodion negative; paper: 23.1 x 16.5 cm (9 1/8 x 6 1/2 in.); matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Jo Hershey Selden Fund, 2001.5
