Charles Marville – Sky Study, Paris, 1856–57 | Giclée Print

Paris, an afternoon in 1856 or 1857: Charles Marville turned his camera above the rooftops and made one of the earliest photographs of nothing but sky. The dome of the Pantheon sits low at the horizon; everything above it is cloud, in the long grey scale that a wet collodion negative and an albumen print can hold.

Marville is remembered as the photographer of the old Paris that Haussmann tore down. This comes from before that commission, made when photographing clouds was still held to be impossible: one exposure could not carry both a landscape and a bright sky. He solved it by giving up the landscape.

What this is.
A giclee reproduction printed with pigment inks from the museum open-access photograph. It is not an original photograph and is not sold as one.

Scale
Original: 15.3 x 21.4 cm / 6 x 8.4 in, albumen print from a wet collodion negative, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1988.191.
50 x 40 cm sheet: original size, 1:1 (image 21.40 x 15.32 cm).
70 x 50 cm sheet: enlarged, 2x original (image 42.80 x 30.63 cm).

A note on the enlargement
The museum file holds 5976 pixels across a picture 21.4 cm wide, which is 709 dpi. That is why the large sheet can print the photograph at twice its original size and still keep 355 dpi. The file sets the limit, not a taste for big prints. At twice the size the albumen grain and the paper texture become visible. That is the photograph, not a fault of the print.

Printing
200 gsm fine art paper, twelve pigment inks. White border, centred on the sheet. The colour of the museum file is kept, not corrected. Unframed, shipped rolled in a tube.

Provenance
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879), Sky Study, Paris, 1856-57; albumen print from a wet collodion negative, 15.3 x 21.4 cm.

Where this comes from
The museum file, the measurements, and what we are allowed to sell: the record for this sheet.

Further reading
Why This Print Is Not Bigger