Charles Aubry - The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Part 1 New York Monday, April 3, 2017 | Phillips

The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy...

New York 3 April 2017

  • Provenance

    Graphics International, Ltd., Washington, D.C.
    Tartt Gallery, Washington, D.C.
    Charles Isaacs Photographs, Inc., New York, 1993

  • Exhibited

    The Art of Photography: 1893-1989, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 11 February- 30 April 1989; Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 17 June- 27 August 1989; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 23 September- 23 December 1989; Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, 3 March- 1 April 1990
    Off the Mall: Inside Washington's Foremost Art Galleries, Organization of American States/The Art Museum of the Americas, 15 September- 16 October 1993

  • Catalogue Essay

    Charles Aubry worked as a decorative arts designer before turning to photography in the 1860s. His meticulously arranged still-life studies of foliage and flowers were intended to serve as aids for designers in the creation of fabrics and wallpaper. Aubry’s complex arrangements, constructed especially for the camera, strike a balance between the verdant chaos of nature and the organizing hand of man. In his still lifes, Aubry exploited the ability of glass-plate negatives to capture detail, and the clarion quality of the resulting images may have surpassed the requirements of their intended purpose. Viewed today, the beautifully photographed tableau offered here ranks as a masterpiece in the still-life genre, both in painting and photography.

    In the 20th century, Aubry’s images came to be appreciated as works of photographic art. In 1985, the J. Paul Getty Museum exhibited his work in The Flower Show: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum Selected by Sam Wagstaff, and in the 1988 exhibition The Flowering of Early French Photography. John Szarkowski included Aubry in his landmark 1989 exhibition Photography Until Now and the accompanying catalogue. Illustrations of Aubry’s photographs appear in Bruce Bernard’s 1980 book, Photodiscovery: Masterworks of Photography 1840-1940, and on the cover of Fraenkel Gallery’s 1989 publication, The Insistent Object: Photographs 1845-1986.

23

Charles Aubry

Untitled (study of leaves)

1864
Albumen print.
17 5/8 x 13 3/8 in. (44.8 x 34 cm)
Facsimile signature and monogram stamp and '1864 Médaille d'Or' blindstamp on the mount.

Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for $137,500

Contact Specialist
Caroline Deck
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Deputy Chairman, Americas

General Enquiries:
+1 212 940 1245

The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Part 1

New York 3 April 2017