Beschreibung:

ULTIMATE Early French Masterworks from the Hyman Collection Charles Nègre Follow Model reclining in the artist’s studio likely 1849-early 1850 Untrimmed salt print from a waxed paper negative. Image: 15.7 x 19.5 cm (6 1/8 x 7 5/8 in.) Sheet: 17 x 25.3 cm (6 3/4 x 9 7/8 in.) Annotated ‘Modèle de l’atelier de Ch. N./c.f. un stéréoscope avec la même cheminée. Modèle pour “La Lecture”' by André Jammes in French and variously numbered in other hands, all in pencil on the verso. This work is the only known print of this image to date and is likely unique. As of this writing, a total of only two salt prints and five paper negatives of studies with the same model in the artist’s studio, presumably from the same sitting, are known to exist. Of the five paper negatives, Musée d’Orsay and Bibliothèque nationale de France each holds a negative of a variant. It is likely that the waxed paper negative of the present image has not survived.
Condition Report Sign up or Log in Provenance By descent to Joseph Nègre, great-nephew Collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes, Paris, late 1950s Sotheby's Paris, La Photographie III: Collection Marie-Thérèse et André Jammes, L'Oeuvre de Charles Nègre , 22 March 2002, lot 301 Vintage Works, Ltd., Chalfont, PA, 2006 The Hyman Collection, London Exhibited Charles Nègre 1820-1880 , Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 21 May - 20 June 1976, this lot Literature J. Borcoman, ed., Charles Nègre 1820-1880 , Ottawa: NGC, 1976, pl. 9, p. 65, titled Model in a Shift Reclining and dated c. 1849 F. Heilbrun, Charles Nègre 1820-1880: Das photographische Werk , Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1988, fig. 30, p. 24, titled Model study for ‘The Reading’ and dated c. 1849 Catalogue Essay ‘Where science ends, art begins ... When the chemist prepares the paper, the artist directs the lens, and by means of the three beacons that guide him ceaseslessly in the study of nature – observation, feeling, and reasoning – he reproduces the effects that make us dream, the simplest patterns that move us, and the sights with powerful and bold silhouettes that surprise us and frighten us.’ Charles Nègre ‘Héliographie sur papier ciré et à sec,’ La Lumière (1851) A woman lies across a bed, as if in sleep. Her arm is draped over her head, her body curls away from us. The deep brownish-black hues of the print pull us into the centre of the image, the bed with its white linens and sleeping figure. Behind her a sheet hangs, its creases and folds sharp and detailed. This important early figure study by master French photographer Charles Nègre provides us with a rare insight into his nuanced understanding of photography as a medium of great artistic expression. According to research by André Jammes, pioneering photography collector and historian, and James Borcoman, the National Gallery of Canada’s former Curator of Photographs, published in the 1976 exhibition catalogue Charles Nègre 1820-1880 , this untrimmed salt print from a waxed paper negative was likely taken in 1849 or early 1850 as a study for his painting La Lecture [The Reading] , which was exhibited at the Salon in 1850. This photograph, however, is more than just a study for a painting. In the 1998 German monograph Charles Nègre 1820-1880: Das photographische Werk , Françoise Heilbrun explains: Nègre ‘deserves to be regarded as the master of the photographic “genre” study, for he brought this mode to an ultimate degree of perfection. He sought and found for photography its appropriate language, the language of life itself… of the spontaneous gesture captured, of quiet, mystery and a sense of contained emotion’ (p. 37). Nègre studied painting under Paul Delaroche Michel Martin Drolling and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres He began experimenting with paper photography in 1848-49, learning the waxed paper negative process from his colleague Gustave Le Gray and initially used photography as a preparatory tool for his paintings. As of this writing, Model reclining in the artist’s studio , the work offered here, is one of two known salt prints and five paper negatives of similar studies; the other salt print is a positive of one of the negatives (figs. 1-7). All six versions feature the same model, bed, sheet backdrop and fireplace. As André Jammes explains in his annotation on the verso of this print, the fireplace locates this, and the other variants, as having been taken in Nègre’s studio based on a stereoscopic photograph (of the artist in his studio). The photograph offered here has a distinguished provenance. Following Nègre’s death in 1880, his entire life's work remained with his family. However, in the late 1950s, the Nègre family sold the majority of the works in the collection. The works, including Model reclining in the artist’s studio , were acquired by André Jammes with the understanding that he would promote Nègre’s work, which he did. The present lot, which was exhibited in the 1976 retrospective C