Femmes musulmanes Syriennes à Beyrouth, Costume de Ville (Two Women)

1884

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Dominant colour

Femmes musulmanes Syriennes à Beyrouth, Costume de Ville (Two Women) is a 1884 by Félix Bonfils, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Félix Bonfils
When & what style?: 1884 · Impressionism
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

Two women in long white robes and face veils stand side by side on a stone balcony in Beirut. Behind them, laundry hangs on a line, and palm trees rise into a soft blue sky. Their dark eyes look directly at the viewer. This image started as a photograph taken by Félix Bonfils in the 1880s. Later, it became a photochrom — a hand-colored print made using multiple stones, each with a single ink. The printers who added color had never seen Beirut or its light, yet tried to make it feel real. For more early color views of the Middle East, look up the artist: Félix Bonfils (French, 1831–1885). (Word count: 117)

The story of this work

Overview

To make a photochrom, a photographic negative was transferred onto a lithographic stone, then printers created a minimum of six and up to fifteen different stones, each with a single color of ink, which were printed atop the black-and-white image. The printers creating the colors had never seen the original locale. Photochroms were popular from the 1890s into the 1910s and were most often collected in albums or framed and hung on the wall.

Did you know?

In the early 1880s, Félix Bonfils was among the first photographers to use the Photocrom process, which produced color images from a single black-and-white negative.

Read the full account in the museum source.