Harvard Art Museums > 2001.76: Children on the Beach Prints Collections Search Exit Deep Zoom Mode Zoom Out Zoom In Reset Zoom Full Screen Add to Collection Order Image Copy Link Copy Citation Citation"Children on the Beach (Heinrich Kühn) , 2001.76,” Harvard Art Museums collections online, Apr 19, 2024, https://hvrd.art/o/173156. Reuse via IIIF Toggle Deep Zoom Mode Download This object does not yet have a description. Identification and Creation Object Number 2001.76 People Heinrich Kühn, Austrian (Dresden, Germany 1866 - 1944 Birgitz, Austria) Title Children on the Beach Classification Prints Work Type print Date c. 1910 Culture Austrian Persistent Link https://hvrd.art/o/173156 Physical Descriptions Medium Sepia-toned photogravure on Japanese paper Technique Photogravure Dimensions plate: 24 x 29.7 cm (9 7/16 x 11 11/16 in.) sheet: 28.2 x 40.3 cm (11 1/8 x 15 7/8 in.) image: 23.3 x 29.2 cm (9 3/16 x 11 1/2 in.) Inscriptions and Marks inscription: verso, u.r., graphite: 85012 inscription: verso, u.c. edge, graphite: Kuhn Acquisition and Rights Credit Line Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, American Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum Fund Accession Year 2001 Object Number 2001.76 Division Modern and Contemporary Art Contact am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu Permissions The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request. Descriptions Commentary As a student in medicine and the natural sciences Heinrich Kühn discovered photography through its scientific uses (photomicrography), but eventually left behind a nascent career in medicine to devote himself to art photography by 1888. His association with the Vienna Camera Club from 1894 led him to discover pictorialist photographers such as Robert Demachy in France, and the Linked Ring group in London, and eventually Alfred Stieglitz in the USA, whom Kühn met in 1904, and who showed Kühn’s work in his Photo-Secession gallery and published it in Camera Work. Through the work of Demachy, Kühn discovered the gum bichromate printing process which he began to use with great frequency from 1895, albeit not exclusively. Kühn experimented with different printing techniques, writing several articles on non-silver techniques. He also made photogravure prints, as exemplified in this acquisition, which he described as a "beautiful and valuable artistic means of expression, especially suitable for those who love precise and laborious work, to achieve the fine details of photographic representation in small formats" (Kühn, Heinrich, "Zur photographischen Technik" in: Enzyklopädie der Photographie und Kinematographie, Vol. 19, Halle, 1926). The tonalist aesthetic in this work recalls Impressionism’s atmospheric effects and subject matter while it also points towards abstraction. Kühn was known to subtitle his pictures "Study in values" or "Study in tones" (according to Michel Frizot in The New History of Photography, Cologne, 1998). The rich tonal qualities of the prints were sometimes enhanced by a dramatic point of view, such as the point of view from above in this picture. In certain ways, it looks forward to the pictorial flattening and the elemental forms associated with photography in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Verification Level This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
