The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 22, 2025

Sign with Hat

1935

Théodore Blanc

(French, 1898–1985)

and Antoine Demilly

(French, 1892–1964)
France, Lyon
gelatin silver print
Image: 29.7 x 29.6 cm (11 11/16 x 11 5/8 in.); Mounted: 34.8 x 34.1 cm (13 11/16 x 13 7/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 2007.33
Location: Not on view

Description

Symbolic advertising, like this sign for a hatmaker, was an historic relic by the 1930s. The importance of point-of-sale advertising was eclipsed in the 1920s by magazine ads and, in the largest cities, electric signs. Blanc and Demilly were brothers-in-law who inherited a portrait studio in Lyon. They expanded the business to include landscape and street photography that chronicled the changing nature of urban life in Lyon, producing images for publication, for sale, and for exhibition as fine art.
  • November 18, 2000
    (Étude Tajan, Paris, Nov. 18, 2000, no. 313)
    2007
    David Raymond [b.1979], NY
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner. Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography : the David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. 2014. cat. no. 162, p. 197
  • Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 19, 2014-January 11, 2015).
  • {{cite web|title=Sign with Hat |url=false|author=Théodore Blanc, Antoine Demilly|year=1935|access-date=22 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2007.33