Arab Musicians

About the Artwork

Taken to catalogue and document cultural practices, both of these photographs were intended as portraits of professions or ethnographic types rather than portraits of individuals. Hart’s image was part of his subscription series Universal Gallery of Peoples, which sought “to reproduce through photography the national costumes that are disappearing rapidly before the advance of civilization, to preserve for people the flavor, and for artists the memory of what once was beautiful and picturesque.” An unidentified photographer captured the picturesque pifferari, country musicians who wandered European cities around Christmas playing before images of the Virgin and on the streets. They were a common theme for French and Italian painters and photographers in the 1840s and 1850s.

Inscriptions

none

Provenance

François le Page, Paris

Exhibition history

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

Quick Overview

Artist: Ludovico Wolfgang Hart (British)
Date: 1864
Medium: albumen print from wet collodion negative
Dimensions: Image: 21.9 x 17.9 cm (8 5/8 x 7 1/16 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.)
Type: Photograph
Classification: Photograph
Department: Photography
Credit line: John L. Severance Fund
Accession no.: 1995.236

Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.