Corcoran art gallery
n.d.
Medium
Albumen print, stereo
Dimensions
Each image: 7.8 × 7.5 cm (3 1/8 × 3 in.); Card: 8.9 × 17.8 cm (3 9/16 × 7 1/16 in.)
Classification
photography
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
198725
Art Historical Context
This stereoscopic albumen print captures the Corcoran Gallery of Art, one of America’s earliest major art museums, through the distinctive two-image format popular in the nineteenth century. Created by photographer Chas. S. Cudlip, the small paired views—each roughly three inches square—were designed to be viewed in a stereoscope, producing a striking three-dimensional effect that brought the gallery’s architecture and collections vividly to life for armchair travelers. Albumen prints, made by coating paper with egg-white emulsion, were the dominant photographic process of the 1860s and 1870s...