Edgar Degas - The Arc of Photography: A Private East Coast Collection New York Tuesday, October 4, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Sotheby's, Paris, La Photographie II: Collection Marie-Thérèse et André Jammes, 21 March 2002, lot 206

  • Exhibited

    Degas, Le modè le et l’espace, Centre Cuturel du Marais, Paris, 1984; Edgar Degas, Photographer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 9 October 1998 - 3 January 1999; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2 February - 28 March 1999; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 11 May - 31 July 1999

  • Literature

    Daniel, Edgar Degas, Photographer, p. 1 and pl. 21

  • Catalogue Essay

    As one of the progenitors of Impressionism, Edgar Degas’s legacy is studded with images that capture the charm, grace and grit in everyday France during the late 19th century. As a contributor to the movement that turned attention away from aristocracy and the clergy and towards the quotidian, Degas was careful to commemorate intimate scenes from cafés, bars, the ballet and the streets, relying on soft pastels to convey atmospheric lighting. His experimentation with photography began in the 1880s and is likely to have influenced his paintings, especially in the abrupt cropping and sometimes tilted angle of his scenes. The reciprocal role between photography and painting in Degas’s work is evidenced in the current photograph, which reveals a strong Pictorialist influence in the careful staging and soft lighting.

    Other prints of this image are in the collections of Le Musée d’orsay, Paris and the Fogg Museum, Cambridge

THE ARC OF PHOTOGRAPHY: A PRIVATE EAST COAST COLLECTION

243

Autoportrait dans sa bibliotheque

1895
Gelatin silver print.
2 3/8 x 3 1/8 in. (6 x 7.9 cm).
Annotated 'Degas chez lui...' in pencil in an unidentified hand with additional Jammes Collection annotations in pencil in a second hand, all on the reverse of the mount.

Estimate
$20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for $30,000

The Arc of Photography: A Private East Coast Collection

4 October 2011 6PM
New York