During the summer of 1856, the photographer Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884) made several portraits of Empress Eugenie, who had become the mother of the Imperial Prince a few months earlier, on 16 March, at the Palais de Saint-Cloud. These images were to enable the painter Thomas Couture (1815-1879) to carry out the imperial commission for a large-format staging of the baptism of the heir to the Napoleonic throne, in order to spare the Empress hours of sittting for the artist.
Photograph: Empress Eugenie in prayer (1856)
Artist(s) : LE GRAY Gustave (1820-1884)
- Date :
- 1856
- Technique :
- Albumin silver print from a collodion glass negative
- Dimensions :
- H = 23,4 cm, L = 18,3 cm
- Place held :
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, USA Collection Gilman, don Harriette et Noel Levine, 2005 Numéro 2005.100.258
- Photo credit :
- © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, USA