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Portrait photograph signed (in full, 'Albert Einstein'), n.p., and 10 October 1930
細節
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Portrait photograph signed (in full, 'Albert Einstein'), n.p., and 10 October 1930
212 x 156mm, laid onto a mount 419 x 301mm. Signed neatly on the mount. Stamp on verso of ATELIER JACOBI, Joachimsthaler-Str. 5, Charlottenburg.
A masterful, large-scale portrait of Einstein at 50 by his favourite photographer: apparently a unique print. The photograph may be one of the portraits occasioned by Einstein's 50th birthday celebrations in 1929, but although it matches the other known images in the formality of Einstein's dress, it evokes a sensitivity, almost gentleness, in the scientist's face which is highly unusual in portraits of this period.
The photographer is almost certainly Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990), for whom Einstein sat on a number of occasions both in Berlin and after they had both emigrated to the United States. She is responsible for one of the most famous of all portraits of him, at his home at Princeton in 1938, wearing a leather jacket. At this date Jacobi was working in the Berlin studio of her father, Sigismund Jacobi (1860-1935), himself a distinguished portrait photographer of subjects including Franz Kafka in 1906. It is chronologically possible that the father is responsible for the photograph, but the use of extreme close-up and soft focus and the sensitivity to the character of the subject are typical of the daughter's work. Lotte Jacobi was obliged to flee Germany for the United States in the autumn of 1935, leaving much of her photographic archive behind her. This may be a unique copy: we have found no other versions of this image.
Portrait photograph signed (in full, 'Albert Einstein'), n.p., and 10 October 1930
212 x 156mm, laid onto a mount 419 x 301mm. Signed neatly on the mount. Stamp on verso of ATELIER JACOBI, Joachimsthaler-Str. 5, Charlottenburg.
A masterful, large-scale portrait of Einstein at 50 by his favourite photographer: apparently a unique print. The photograph may be one of the portraits occasioned by Einstein's 50th birthday celebrations in 1929, but although it matches the other known images in the formality of Einstein's dress, it evokes a sensitivity, almost gentleness, in the scientist's face which is highly unusual in portraits of this period.
The photographer is almost certainly Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990), for whom Einstein sat on a number of occasions both in Berlin and after they had both emigrated to the United States. She is responsible for one of the most famous of all portraits of him, at his home at Princeton in 1938, wearing a leather jacket. At this date Jacobi was working in the Berlin studio of her father, Sigismund Jacobi (1860-1935), himself a distinguished portrait photographer of subjects including Franz Kafka in 1906. It is chronologically possible that the father is responsible for the photograph, but the use of extreme close-up and soft focus and the sensitivity to the character of the subject are typical of the daughter's work. Lotte Jacobi was obliged to flee Germany for the United States in the autumn of 1935, leaving much of her photographic archive behind her. This may be a unique copy: we have found no other versions of this image.
榮譽呈獻
Eugenio Donadoni
Senior Specialist, Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts