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The image depicts a man seated from the waist up in the center of the frame. His left hand is tucked into his partially open shirt. He is facing the camera directly and has a lined forehead and prominent cheekbones, with an intense expression. He has receding hair, showing a fair amount of forehead, with longer hair at the sides. He wears a loose, light-colored shirt with ruffled sleeves and no visible accessories or jewelry. A hand from an unseen person extends from the left side of the image, holding a string or pendulum above the man's head. The background is plain and slightly textured in a sepia tone, without any additional elements.
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The image depicts a man seated from the waist up in the center of the frame. His left hand is tucked into his partially open shirt. He is facing the camera directly and has a lined forehead and prominent cheekbones, with an intense expression. He has receding hair, showing a fair amount of forehead, with longer hair at the sides. He wears a loose, light-colored shirt with ruffled sleeves and no visible accessories or jewelry. A hand from an unseen person extends from the left side of the image, holding a string or pendulum above the man's head. The background is plain and slightly textured in a sepia tone, without any additional elements.

National Gallery of Art · Photograph

Attention (left); Severity, aggression (right)

Guillaume-Benjamin-Amant Duchenne (de Boulogne)

Date
1854-1856, printed 1862
Medium
albumen silver print
Dimensions
image: 22.1 × 15.8 cm (8 11/16 × 6 1/4 in.) mount: 40.2 × 27.5 cm (15 13/16 × 10 13/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Accession number
2015.52.5
Credit line
W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg Fund, in Honor of the 25th Anniversary of Photography at the National Gallery of Art
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. 17.; lower center-right of mount in black letterpress: Duchenne (de Boulogne), phot.

NGA object ID 169268. 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.