Lot n° 73
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1500 - 2500
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Result
: 1 500EUR
JEAN MARMAND 1840-1896 Girls' school sisters and their pupil - Lot 73
JEAN MARMAND 1840-1896 Girls' school sisters and their pupils in front of the factory, Dangu, ca.1865. Photograph. Salt paper print from a collodion glass negative mounted on cardboard, signature stamp in red ink lower right. Image: 32.8 x 41.5 cm; mount: 45.2 x 53.5 cm In 1900, Nadar praised Marmand in "Quand j'étais photographe". He wrote: "The Bisson brothers had managed to find and train in the laboratory a simple city guard who, with outstretched arm, covered with a spray, - without a return, without a drip, without a broth, without a speck of dust, - a one-by-eighty-meter mirror, with outstretched arm. This brave man, who had his hour of relative fame, perhaps deserves to have his name preserved in this legend: his name was Marmand". Operator for the Bisson brothers, he later became Adolphe Braun's assistant on his photographic campaigns in Switzerland, Germany and Savoy in the mid-1860s.
Very few Marmand prints are known, especially in such a large format. The exceptional size of the print does not detract from the finesse of the composition. The two sisters are symmetrically placed, forming two points of light thanks to their headdresses, while the little girl dressed in a cross motif is in the middle of the group, extending the diagonals. The opposition between tradition and modernity is clear. On the left, a woman is picking flowers or fruit, while a cart in the background accentuates the picturesque dimension of the setting. On the right, by contrast, rises the modernity of the new factory (probably zinc) and its smoking brick chimneys.
Bibliography:
"In La Lumière", 1855, p. 198, and 1857, p. 131, Marmand is cited for the quality of his romantic views of Germany and the Rhine banks.
O'Brien and Bergstein (eds.), "Image and Enterprise. The Photographs of Adolphe Braun", Providence/London, Rhode Island School of Design/Thames & Hudson, 2000 (texts by Christian Kempf, pp. 9-29, and Deborah Bright, pp. 93-119).
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