Metropolitan Museum of Art Purchase, W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg and Christian Keesee Charitable Trust Gifts, 2011, Accession Number: 2011.65
Curatorial description
In the 1850s Marville made a series of portraits of Charles Delahaye, his assistant and possibly distant cousin. Twenty-four years Marville's junior, the young Delahaye appears here as a moody, sensuous figure. Although the print is technically imperfect—the right corner suggests an awkward attempt to correct a flaw in the negative—the closely cropped composition creates a striking immediacy that is unusual in photographs of the period.
