Matra Reinhard
1868
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1868
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Matra Reinhard is a 1868 by Jacques-Philippe Potteau, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
The painting shows a girl posing in a plain background. She looks straightforward, with no fancy props. This portrait is interesting because it was made as a study of everyday people, not as a fancy artwork. The artist used a simple setup to take this photo, which was unusual for the time. He wanted to show the girl as she really was, without any distractions. You can learn more about this style by looking up the technique of sfumato.
These striking portraits of working-class girls were made as ethnographic or artistic studies of types. Potteau’s photograph was part of an anthropological series the naturalist produced for the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Employing the standard commercial portrait studio conventions of the time, he carefully posed his subject in an even light. However, instead of a painted backdrop, Potteau used a plain background as if shooting a scientific specimen. On the mount he recorded her biographical data: her name, that she was born in Paris to parents from Bohemia five years ago,…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jacques-Philippe Potteau (1807–1876) was a French artist.
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