[Two Standing Female Nudes]

Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin  (French, 1800–after 1875)

Date:
ca. 1850
Medium:
Daguerreotype
Dimensions:
visible: 14.5 x 11.1 cm (5 11/16 x 4 3/8 in.)
Classification:
Photographs
Credit Line:
The Rubel Collection, Purchase, Anonymous Gift and Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1997
Accession Number:
1997.382.46
  • Description

    Although Moulin was sentenced in 1851 to a month in jail for producing images that, according to court papers, were "so obscene that even to pronounce the titles . . . would be to commit an indecency," this daguerreotype seems more allied to art than to erotica. Instead of the boudoir props and provocative poses typical of hand-colored pornographic daguerreotypes, Moulin depicted these two young women utterly at ease, as unselfconscious in their nudity as Botticelli’s Venus.

  • Provenance

    Michel Simon, Paris; [Galerie Gerard Levy, Paris]; [Sean Thackrey, San Francisco (March 1978)]; William Rubel, Santa Cruz, California; [Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Fine Photographs, New York]

  • See also
    Who
    What
    Where
    When
    In the Museum
    Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
190035120

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