Mother with Two Children

About the Artwork

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.

Inscriptions

written in black on recto: "19"; written in pencil on verso: "50/2 [upside down]"; written in black on verso: "4"

Provenance

?-2001: (Charles Isaacs Photographs, Inc., New York, NY) March 5, 2001: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Exhibition history

Cheating Death: Portrait Photography’s First Half Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 22, 2016-February 5, 2017).

Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.

Quick Overview

Artist: Jean-Baptist Frénet (French, 1814–1889)
Date: c. 1855
Medium: salted paper print from a collodion negative
Dimensions: 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.)
Type: Photograph
Classification: Photograph
Department: Photography
Credit line: Jo Hershey Selden Fund
Accession no.: 2001.5

Open-access museum record · AT-00000380