Lot 27
Lot 27
Lot Details
Eugène Atget
1857 - 1927
'La Villette, rue Asselin, fille publique faisant le quart devant sa porte, 19e'
gold-toned gelatin silver printing-out print, numbered ‘6218’ in the negative, titled and annotated with negative number ‘6218’ in pencil and with the photographer’s credit stamp, annotated '17 bis' in pencil, on the reverse, framed, 1921
image: 8 ⅞ by 7 in. (22.5 by 17.8 cm.)
frame: 18 by 15 ¾ in. (45.7 by 40 cm.)
Condition Report
Please note the colors and shades in the online catalogue illustration may vary depending on screen settings.
This photograph on semi-gloss paper is in generally excellent condition. The image's tonality portrays exceptional detail, from the subtlety of a nearly imperceptible checkered garment visible just inside the doorway's interior, to the geometric weave of the fabric of sitter's skirt.
Upon close examination under raking light, the following are visible: some linear, raised areas, that correspond to the locations of the photographer's handwriting and stamp on the reverse; and a few soft, faintly visible handling creases. There a tiny black accretion of indeterminate nature to the right of the sitter's head. The print is slightly unevenly trimmed at the lower edge.
On the reverse, the print edges are darkened.
The lot is sold in the condition it is in at the time of sale. The condition report is provided to assist you with assessing the condition of the lot and is for guidance only. Any reference to condition in the condition report for the lot does not amount to a full description of condition. The images of the lot form part of the condition report for the lot. Certain images of the lot provided online may not accurately reflect the actual condition of the lot. In particular, the online images may represent colors and shades which are different to the lot's actual color and shades. The condition report for the lot may make reference to particular imperfections of the lot but you should note that the lot may have other faults not expressly referred to in the condition report for the lot or shown in the online images of the lot. The condition report may not refer to all faults, restoration, alteration or adaptation. The condition report is a statement of opinion only. For that reason, the condition report is not an alternative to taking your own professional advice regarding the condition of the lot. NOTWITHSTANDING THIS ONLINE CONDITION REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE/BUSINESS APPLICABLE TO THE RESPECTIVE SALE.
Provenance
The photographer to Tristan Tzara, Paris
By descent to Marie-Therese Tzara
Christie’s New York, 29 April 1999, Sale 9150, Lot 166
Literature
Berenice Abbott, The World of Atget (New York, 1964), pl. 124
The Work of Atget, Volume IV: Modern Times (The Museum of Modern Art, 1985), p. 110, pl. 74
Molly Nesbit, Atget’s Seven Albums (New Haven, 1992), p. 28
Laure Beaumont-Maillet, Atget Paris (Santa Rosa, 1992), p. 759
John Szarkowski, Atget (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2000), p. 123
Garry Badger, Eugène Atget 55 (London, 2001), p. 93
Catalogue Note
This photograph comes originally from the collection of Tristan Tzara (1895-1963), poet, writer, and a founding father of the Dada movement in Zurich. Tzara likely encountered Eugène Atget’s work in the 1920s, while living near the photographer’s studio on rue Campagne-Première. Atget’s photographs, promoted by him as 'Documents pour Artistes,' were re-contextualized by the Parisian avant-garde, who saw in his images of Paris’s changing landscape, architecture, and street vendors, an unselfconscious, ‘automatic’ vision. Tzara would also undoubtedly have seen the Atget photographs reproduced in a famous 1926 issue of La Révolution Surréaliste, André Breton’s definitive Surrealist journal of the era.
La Villette, rue Asselin, fille publique faisant le quart devant sa porte, 19e comes from a series of photographs commissioned in 1921 by the Cubist painter André Dignimont, who intended to publish a book on Parisian prostitutes. Although the volume was never realized, Atget's few photographs for the project are now among his most arresting and complex. Taken in the working class area of Versailles at the corner of Monjol and Asselin (today rue Turot), this study of a heavyset woman seated outside a dark, beckoning doorway could today be mistaken for a modern street portrait. One might expect something more sensational for a photograph of a prostitute, but in Atget's study, all traces of eroticism or pornography, long a part of the photographic tradition, are lacking. It has been suggested that Dignimont, a collector of erotica, did not find the pictures to his liking and therefore did not acquire them.
The prostitutes are among the least numerous of all of Atget's subjects, and consequently extant prints of them are scarce. A print of the image now in the collection of Musée d’Orsay, Paris, was gifted by Marie-Thérèse et André Jammes. Only two other prints of this image are believed to have been offered at auction, including a photograph sold in April 2011 originally from the collection of Julien Levy.