Two Standing Female Nudes

Two Standing Female Nudes

Two Standing Female Nudes

Artist: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

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]

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