ORThe Open Room
Digital gallery
Back to the NGA collection
The image depicts the upper half of a man facing the camera directly. He is shown bare-chested under a loosely draped shirt, with pronounced facial features including a furrowed brow and deep-set eyes. He has thinning hair at the top, with longer, wavy strands at the sides. The man's open, wrinkled shirt is visible. The background is plain and sepia-toned, giving a vintage effect. A hand on the left side of the image is holding an object that extends towards the man's face, possibly touching his eyebrow.
Read the visual description

The image depicts the upper half of a man facing the camera directly. He is shown bare-chested under a loosely draped shirt, with pronounced facial features including a furrowed brow and deep-set eyes. He has thinning hair at the top, with longer, wavy strands at the sides. The man's open, wrinkled shirt is visible. The background is plain and sepia-toned, giving a vintage effect. A hand on the left side of the image is holding an object that extends towards the man's face, possibly touching his eyebrow.

National Gallery of Art · Photograph

Attention (left); Reflection (right)

Guillaume-Benjamin-Amant Duchenne (de Boulogne)

Date
1854-1856, printed 1862
Medium
albumen silver print
Dimensions
image: 22.1 × 16.1 cm (8 11/16 × 6 5/16 in.) mount: 40.3 × 27.5 cm (15 7/8 × 10 13/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Accession number
2015.52.18
Credit line
Eugene L. and Marie-Louise Garbáty Fund
Time span
1851 to 1875
Department
CPH
Original NGA record Wikidata

Portfolio and series

Portfolio
Mécanisme de la Physionomie (The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression)

Subjects and terms

  • French
  • portrait
  • albumen silver print
  • Facial expression
  • Science
  • Electrical
Provenance

Alphonse Bertillon, Paris; by descent to Pascal Vincent-Bertillon, Paris; NGA purchase (through Denis Canguilhem, Paris), 2015.

Inscription

upper center of mount in black letterpress: Électro-Physiologie Photographique. / Fig. 12.; lower center-right of mount in black letterpress: Duchenne (de Boulogne), phot.; by unknown hand, lower right in graphite: [illegible]

NGA object ID 169265. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.