Beschreibung:

ULTIMATE Early French Masterworks from the Hyman Collection John Beasley Greene Follow Palais de Médinet Habou, Colosse de Ramses III (Vêtement) winter 1854-1855 Untrimmed salt print from a waxed paper negative. Image: 31.5 x 20.5 cm (12 3/8 x 8 1/8 in.) Sheet: 32.1 x 21.5 cm (12 5/8 x 8 1/2 in.) Numbered '118' in an unidentified hand in pencil on the verso. This work is one of only four known prints of this image to date. Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Collège de France and a private collection in Luxor each holds a salt print of this image, trimmed and mounted within Greene’s unpublished album Fouilles Executées à Thèbes, 1855 .
Condition Report Sign up or Log in Provenance La Librairie d'Amérique et d'Orient, Paris Collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes, Paris, 1960s Sotheby's Paris, La Photographie II: Collection Marie-Thérèse et André Jammes , 21 March 2002, lot 157 Serge Plantereux, Paris, 2012 The Hyman Collection, London Literature J. B. Greene, Fouilles Executées à Thèbes, 1855 , unpublished, pl. 4 B. Jammes, 'John B. Greene, an American Calotypist,' History of Photography , vol. 5, no. 4, 1981, fig. 13 p. 317, a plate from Greene’s unpublished album Fouilles Executées à Thèbes, 1855 Catalogue Essay In the space of four years, between 1852 and 1856, the photographic career of John Beasley Greene was defined by three archaeological trips in Egypt and Algeria. The present photograph was taken in the winter of 1854-55 when Greene visited Thebes and Deir el Bahari on his second trip to Egypt. On this trip, unlike the first, he was authorised to conduct excavations, the majority of which were done at Medinet Habu and Temple of Ramesses III. As the first practicing archaeologist to use photography, Greene produced the earliest photographs of Medinet Habu, including the close-up view of the torso of the colossal statue offered here. This salt print with its rich aubergine colour, dense shadows and strikingly dark borders framing the image is an exceptional example of his oeuvre. Following his return to Paris, Greene produced two compilations on his research in Egypt. The first was a publication, Fouilles exécutées à Thèbes dans l'année 1855 (Didot, 1855), that analysed the inscriptions of the hieroglyphics in Thebes and did not include any photographs. The second, Fouilles exécutées à Thèbes, 1855 , was an unpublished album, comprising 12 of his photographs. Only three copies of this album are known to exist and each copy contains a trimmed and mounted salt print of the present image as Plate 4, making the lot offered here as the only known proof print of the image. While Greene’s manuscript annotation ‘Palais de Médinet Habou, Colosse de Ramses III (Vêtement)' [Palace of Medinet Habou, Colossus of Ramses III (Clothing)] , accompanying the image in the album, presents the photograph as an archaeological document, his composition, choice of framing and rendering of light and shadows reveal his artistic sensibilities. What we know of this French-born American archaeologist-photographer, who died prematurely at the age of 24, comes from research conducted by Bruno Jammes in France and Will Stapp in the US. Greene’s photographs were heavily featured alongside those by Le Gray, Nègre (lot 1) and Delaunay (lot 9) in Modernisme ou modernité: les photographes du cercle de Gustave Le Gray at the Petit Palais in 2012-13. The first major retrospective of his work will open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on 31 August 2019 and will run through 5 January 2020, before travelling to the Art Institute of Chicago. We extend our sincere thanks to Corey Keller, Curator of Photography at SFMOMA, and André and Bruno Jammes for their expertise and assistance in our research. Read More