Alvin Langdon Coburn
The Cloud — Bavaria

The Cloud — Bavaria

The Cloud — Bavaria
ArtistBritish, born United States, 1882–1966
CultureBritish
Titles
  • The Cloud — Bavaria
Date1908
Place depictedGermany
MediumPhotogravure
DimensionsImage: 14 7/16 × 10 1/2 in. (36.7 × 26.7 cm)
Sheet: 15 3/8 × 11 3/16 in. (39.1 × 28.4 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Carey C. and Willard W. Shuart
Object number77.54
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

Once photographers could photograph clouds with relative
ease, they began to use them to enhance the natural drama of their landscapes. From
bright white to thundery black, clouds were a subject particularly well suited
to the long tonal range of the photogravure, a printing process that renders grayscale
with excellent fidelity.



 



Despite the rich subtlety of this photograph taken in
southern Germany, one critic derided Coburn’s print for its “gross
exaggerations of contrast.” A few years later, in 1912, Coburn illustrated a publication
of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem “The Cloud” (1820) with six sky-filled
landscapes. From a puffy cumulus to an ominous nimbus, Coburn’s variety of
cloud types visually echo Shelley’s Romantic poem, which is written from the
perspective of a continually reborn cloud: “I change, but I cannot die.”




ProvenanceInternational Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; purchased by MFAH, 1977.
Exhibition HistoryExhibited: "Circle of Stieglitz ... from Houston Collections," Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, 6 March - 4 April 1982 (LN:82.18)
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
no apparent inscriptions

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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