Eugène Atget (1857–1927) - Parc de Saint Cloud

Eugène Atget (1857-1927), Parc de Saint Cloud.

Light print on chamois-colored vellum, 21 x 16.7 cm on 22.5 x 18.3 cm.

Provenance: private ownership, Berlin.

Verso with the stamp “E. ATGET / COL. BERENICE ABBOTT / PHOTOGRAVURE 1930” and, in pencil by a different hand, labeled “49.”

Condition: Probably trimmed around the edges, mounted with paper collages on the verso and recto at the top edge in a passepartout. Otherwise, very good condition.

Biography
Eugène Atget was born in 1957 in Libourne, France. In 1878, he moved to Paris to pursue a career as an actor, though without much success. He began photographing in 1888. From 1890, he sold his images, captured with a large-format camera on glass negative plates, as work material to artists, designers, and architects. A large part of his extensive oeuvre, consisting of around 8,500 glass negatives, was sold by Atget in 1920 to French institutions. After his death in 1927, the young photographer Berenice Abbott, who had come to know and appreciate Atget through his friend Man Ray, acquired part of his estate and published the first overview of Atget’s work in 1930, which brought him international recognition posthumously.