Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne
Terror

Public Domain

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Artist Guillaume Duchenne de BoulogneFrench, 1806–1875

Artist Adrien TournachonFrench, 1825–1903

CultureFrench

Titles

Terror
from Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine ou Analyse électro-physiologique de l’expression des passions applicable à la pratique des arts plastiques (Mechanism of Human Physiognomy or Electro-Physiological Analysis of the Expression of Passions Applicable to the Practice of the Visuals Arts.)

Date1854–1856, printed 1862

MediumAlbumen silver print from glass negative

DimensionsImage: 8 5/8 × 6 1/4 in. (21.9 × 15.9 cm)
Sheet: 8 5/8 × 6 1/4 in. (21.9 × 15.9 cm)
Mount: 15 7/8 × 10 15/16 in. (40.3 × 27.8 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Buddy Taub Foundation, Dennis A. Roach and Jill Roach, Directors

Object number2015.61

Not on view

Explore Further

Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionAmong the most gripping photographs of the 19th century, plates from Duchenne de Boulogne’s Mechanism of Human Physiognomy occupy a unique place at the intersection of art, science, and sentiment. A pioneering neurologist and physiologist as well as an amateur aesthetician, Duchenne de Boulogne conducted a series of experiments aimed at eliciting expressions of the principal emotions through the electrical stimulation of facial muscles. His goal was to publish an updated version of earlier treatises on the “passions of the soul”—attention, aggression, pain, joy, lasciviousness, sadness, surprise—this time based in science and recorded accurately with photography for use by artists. Here, Duchenne described the expression as that of a man who is “frozen and stupefied by terror; his face shows a dreadful mixture of horror and fear at the news of a danger that puts this life in peril or of inevitable torture.” Although Duchenne wrote that his model—this old, toothless, feebleminded soul—felt no pain from the electrical stimulation because of an anesthetic condition of the face, it is difficult not the feel a sense of pathos and to consider the genuine emotions he must have experienced.
ProvenanceLikely Alphonse Bertillon, Paris, d. 1914; by descent to Pascal Vincent-Bertillon; purchased by MFAH, 2015.
Exhibition History“A History of Photography II: Selections from the Museum's Collection,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 17–July 19, 2015.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

printed top center of mount: ÉLECTRO-PHYSIOLOGIE PHOTOGRAPHIQUE. / FIG. 61.

printed lower right below image: DUCHENNE (de Boulogne), phot.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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