[Two Standing Female Nudes]

Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin

ca. 1850 · Daguerreotype · Photographs

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.

Artist

Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin

Date

ca. 1850

Medium

Daguerreotype

Department

Photographs

Credit line

The Rubel Collection, Purchase, Anonymous Gift and Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1997