Lot Essay
To the present day photographer the name of Pierre Dubreuil of Lille stands for one of the extremists of photography... he is one of the three to whose influence and example the development of the 'New Photography' is to be traced, the others being Malcolm Arbuthnot in England and Paul Strand in America... It was in 1910 that his picture Elphantaisie, at the London Salon really did startle photographers and set Dubreuil off on the career of "stunting" that has intrigued or outraged photographers ever since.
- J. Dudley Johnston, The Photographic Journal, August 1935
During his lifetime, and especially during the period just before World War I, Pierre Dubreuil proved himself to be a unique figure, an unpredictable, rebellious sort in the Salons of photography. 1908 proved to be a year of artistic and personal freedoms for Dubreuil. According to Tom Jacobson, Dubreuil separated from his wife and moved to Paris (op. cit, p. 16). It also was the year he disjoined himself from the Linked Ring, likely in the cause of freer artistic license, literally and figuratively losing the weight of unwanted chains.
Elphantaisie, executed in 1908, was arguably Dubreuil's greatest affront on the Pictorialist sensibility. With its' undeniable modernity and flagrant diminishing of France's most recognizable cultural symbol, Dubreuil created a sensation. One critic opined, "[Dubreuil] should have accompanied Mr. Roosevelt to the end of the equatorial forest; he could have photographed big game, instead of this golden bronze junk that is barely acceptable among the bushes and flower beds of a public square but is a challenge to the commonsense on the walls of an exhibition." (ibid, pp. 16-17). (The "golden bronze junk" was lphant pris au pige, the work of the French sculptor Emmanuel Fremiet [1824-1910]; [Chevillot, S102, cat. 56]. It had was ordered in 1877 for placement on the terrace of the first Trocadro Palace, Exposition Universelle, 1878. In December 1935 it was moved to Porte de Saint Cloud due to the new Exposition Universelle, 1937. In May or June 1986 it was moved again, this time to its current site in the courtyard outside the Muse d'Orsay for the opening of the museum.)
As a member of the Linked Ring Dubreuil was keenly aware of Alfred Stieglitz's role in the promotion of photography as a fine art. In the hopes of pressing Stieglitz into including his photographs in Camera Work, Dubreuil sent Stieglitz a group of twelve prints in 1910. Without the photographer's knowledge, Stieglitz submitted the work to be included in the jured Open Section of the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography to be held later that year at the Albright Gallery in Buffalo. This was to be Stieglitz's own last hurrah for the Pictorial aesthetic and though the exhibition was greeted with mixed reactions, F. Austin Lidbury, writing in American Photography claimed one of the "joy spots" in the exhibition were the "six extraordinarily interesting examples of Dubreuil's original, if distorted way of looking at things." (c.f. Jacobson, p. 18). The six images chosen were Steam - Gare du Nord (cat. no. 510, a.k.a. Puissance - Mightiness, see: Christie's New York, April 23, 1994, Lot 13); Place de Province (cat. no. 511); The Beguinage (cat. no. 512); Grand Place - Brussels (cat. no. 513); Notre Dame de Paris (cat. no. 514) and Elphantesia (sic); (cat. no. 515). The example offered here, the only exhibition print extant, is likely the one displayed at Albright. It was more recently included in the 1992 exhibition, Proto-Modern Photography, curated by Beaumont Newhall for the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe.
The only other print known is an unsigned, printing-out paper proof.
- J. Dudley Johnston, The Photographic Journal, August 1935
During his lifetime, and especially during the period just before World War I, Pierre Dubreuil proved himself to be a unique figure, an unpredictable, rebellious sort in the Salons of photography. 1908 proved to be a year of artistic and personal freedoms for Dubreuil. According to Tom Jacobson, Dubreuil separated from his wife and moved to Paris (op. cit, p. 16). It also was the year he disjoined himself from the Linked Ring, likely in the cause of freer artistic license, literally and figuratively losing the weight of unwanted chains.
Elphantaisie, executed in 1908, was arguably Dubreuil's greatest affront on the Pictorialist sensibility. With its' undeniable modernity and flagrant diminishing of France's most recognizable cultural symbol, Dubreuil created a sensation. One critic opined, "[Dubreuil] should have accompanied Mr. Roosevelt to the end of the equatorial forest; he could have photographed big game, instead of this golden bronze junk that is barely acceptable among the bushes and flower beds of a public square but is a challenge to the commonsense on the walls of an exhibition." (ibid, pp. 16-17). (The "golden bronze junk" was lphant pris au pige, the work of the French sculptor Emmanuel Fremiet [1824-1910]; [Chevillot, S102, cat. 56]. It had was ordered in 1877 for placement on the terrace of the first Trocadro Palace, Exposition Universelle, 1878. In December 1935 it was moved to Porte de Saint Cloud due to the new Exposition Universelle, 1937. In May or June 1986 it was moved again, this time to its current site in the courtyard outside the Muse d'Orsay for the opening of the museum.)
As a member of the Linked Ring Dubreuil was keenly aware of Alfred Stieglitz's role in the promotion of photography as a fine art. In the hopes of pressing Stieglitz into including his photographs in Camera Work, Dubreuil sent Stieglitz a group of twelve prints in 1910. Without the photographer's knowledge, Stieglitz submitted the work to be included in the jured Open Section of the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography to be held later that year at the Albright Gallery in Buffalo. This was to be Stieglitz's own last hurrah for the Pictorial aesthetic and though the exhibition was greeted with mixed reactions, F. Austin Lidbury, writing in American Photography claimed one of the "joy spots" in the exhibition were the "six extraordinarily interesting examples of Dubreuil's original, if distorted way of looking at things." (c.f. Jacobson, p. 18). The six images chosen were Steam - Gare du Nord (cat. no. 510, a.k.a. Puissance - Mightiness, see: Christie's New York, April 23, 1994, Lot 13); Place de Province (cat. no. 511); The Beguinage (cat. no. 512); Grand Place - Brussels (cat. no. 513); Notre Dame de Paris (cat. no. 514) and Elphantesia (sic); (cat. no. 515). The example offered here, the only exhibition print extant, is likely the one displayed at Albright. It was more recently included in the 1992 exhibition, Proto-Modern Photography, curated by Beaumont Newhall for the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe.
The only other print known is an unsigned, printing-out paper proof.