Sky Study, Paris
Medium
albumen print from wet collodion negative
Dimensions
image: 15.3 × 21.4 cm · matted: 40.6 × 50.8 cm
Classification
Photograph
Department
Photography
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
John L. Severance Fund
Accession Number
1988.191
Tags
About this artwork
Marville framed the city so that the dome at Les Invalides—a retirement home and hospital for military veterans—dominates the skyline. Below lie dark, dense neighborhoods where individual buildings are barely discernable. Photographing skies in landscapes was challenging in the 1850s: the light-sensitive coatings were incapable of properly exposing both earth and the heavens in a single shot. There is no doubt that Marville’s interest here was the sky—the magnificent massing of clouds that momen...