Frank Chauvassaignes - Artist (or Assistant) with Pipe - 1998.174 - Cleveland Museum of Art

Frank Chauvassaignes' portrait is an outstanding example of compositional and technical achievement in early French photography. A handsome young painter, outfitted for work in the studio in a rumpled smock, appears to be caught in a moment of introspection, pipe in hand. The camera's lowered position gives the sitter a dignified air. In this formally balanced portrait, the photographer captured not only the sitter's physical likeness, but also his state of mind.

Chauvassaignes, a photographer with a trained and sophisticated eye, lived in Clermont-Ferrand, a city in central France, and was a member of the Société française de photographie. To date, little information has been found about this artist and his small, though remarkable, body of known images