This rugged landscape with massive boulders, trees, a waterfall, and a bear is the work of Louis-Joseph Deflubé, an amateur painter and photographer and the director of the thermal baths and Hôtel des Bains at Pierrefonds, northeast of Paris. The photograph presents something of a mystery—a landscape so unlike his native Picardie and a remarkable tour de force recording a bear in the wild. How could it be? The answer is to be found in a handwritten note by his grandson that reveals Deflubé’s landscapes to have been made in his attic: “On a board supported mostly by old boxes . . . he built the foreground of dirt and sand which he colored as necessary; massive trees are branches of junipers, pines, or others, the palm trees are the feathers of a feather duster bound together into a bundle, the water of the lakes a mirror placed horizontally, the mountain waterfalls cotton and ice floes baking soda. . . . I was in awe, but Grandpa asked me not to jump or shake the supporting floor for fear of collapsing mountains and waves, as sometimes happened when a heavy car passed on the street.”

Once clued in by Deflubé’s grandson, one can easily recognize that the landscape here is a mere diorama, and see past the common assumption that photographs always tell the truth. In the age of Photoshop and computer-generated imagery, one knows to be on guard, but the same skepticism also was warranted 150 years ago.