LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  PHOTOGRAPHS PART II  / 

70

EUGÈNE ATGET (French, 1857-1927) AU BON PUITS, RUE MICHEL-LE-COMTE, 36 titled and numbered by ar...

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EUGÈNE ATGET (French, 1857-1927) AU BON PUITS, RUE MICHEL-LE-COMTE, 36 titled and numbered by ar...
EUGÈNE ATGET (French, 1857-1927) AU BON PUITS, RUE MICHEL-LE-COMTE, 36 titled and numbered by artist in pencil on verso of each 2 albumen prints vertical image: 8 3/4 x 7 in. (22.2 x 17.8 cm) horizontal image: 7 x 8 5/8 in. (17.8 x 21.9 cm) circa 1901 PROVENANCE Zabriskie Gallery, NEW YORK Private Collection, NEW YORK LITERATURE John Szarkowski and Maria Morris Hambourg, THE WORK OF ATGET: VOLUME II: THE ART OF OLD PARIS, New York, 1982, p. 108, pl. 64 (vertical image illustrated) Molly Nesbit, ATGET'S SEVEN ALBUMS, New Haven, 1992, p. 325, fig. 18 and p. 386 (both illustrated) Laure Beaumont-Maillet, ATGET PARIS, Paris, 1992, p. 213 (vertical image illustrated) IN FOCUS: EUGÈNE ATGET, Los Angeles, 2000, p. 21, pl. 6 (vertical image illustrated; detail of Atget's reflection in window on p. 99) The vertical photograph serves at least two documentary purposes. It is a record of a café or bistro façade, and it includes a reflection on the glass door of the artist at work. Whether or not the latter is intentional remains a subject of debate. Nevertheless, the reflection lends a special appeal to this image. Eugène Atget sought to record the remnants of old Paris, and he especially appreciated 17th-century architecture. In addition to such grand monuments as Versailles, he was attracted to more quotidian subjects-banisters, shop signs, and façades-that were not only overlooked but rapidly disappearing at the start of the 20th century. Atget photographed numerous façades that included decorative metalwork. Designed for a largely illiterate public before street names and numbers were in common use, the signs, or sculptures, served as both name and address. This one could be translated as "At the Good Well." Many of these grilles were spared destruction because law required them on establishments that served alcohol and were open at night. The metalwork above the door in this photograph can now be found at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, the same institution that houses one of the largest collections of Atget's work. Atget only made contact prints, and did not use an enlarger. If he needed an enlargement of a detail, he simply made a close-up of the detail on the photograph itself using an extension bellows on his camera. The horizontal photograph was made by this method.
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