Désiré Charnay - The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Part 2 New York Tuesday, April 4, 2017 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Christie's, New York, 9 October 1997, lot 124

  • Literature

    Davis, Désiré Charnay: Expeditionary Photographer, pl. 46
    Apraxine, Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company, pl. 43
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Waking Dream: Photography's First Century, Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection, p. 308
    White, Jammes, and Sobieszek, 'French Primitive Photography', Aperture, Spring 1970, Vol. 15, No. 1, n.p.

  • Catalogue Essay

    Désiré Charnay is perhaps best known for his photographs of the ancient ruins of Central America and Mexico. He also created a small but important body of work on Madagascar, which he visited in 1863 as part of a scientific expedition. Charnay made several full-length portraits of Raharla, minister to Madagascar’s Queen Rasoherina. The present image was reproduced as a woodcut in Charnay’s Bird’s Eye View of Madagascar published in 1869.

    An additional print of this image is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

132

Raharla, Minister to the Queen

1863
Albumen silver print.
8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Titled 'Raharla' in an unidentified hand in ink on the mount.

Estimate
$10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for $32,500

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The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Part 2

New York 4 April 2017