Portraits of Authors, Portraits of Artists

Original photographic portrait of Alfred de Vigny seated in profile in a velvet armchair, mounted at an early date on stiff grey card. The poet sits with his arms folded, his gaze directed beyond the frame, holding a propelling pencil in his right hand. Early manuscript caption in ink along the lower margin of the mount, “Le C.te Alfred de Vigny”, with “NADAR” inscribed in capitals in the right margin. From a collector's album. Small area of superficial loss to the mount in the foreground beneath the sitter's hand.

The composition belongs to Nadar's earliest sittings with Vigny. The Musée d'Orsay preserves...

An original albumen carte-de-visite photograph of Eugène Delacroix, depicting the artist seated in a chair — his most famous portrait. The session at Pierre Petit’s studio yielded multiple poses; variants of this print survive at the Musée d’Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Mounted on card, with Pierre Petit’s signature in the lower margin and his studio advertisement on the verso.

Original albumen photograph of Jules Verne in profile, in carte-de-visite format, mounted on the heavy card stock of the Nadar studio, 51 rue d'Anjou-Saint-Honoré, Paris. Early pen inscription on the verso identifying Jules Verne, printed advertising matter for the studio including the statement “Gold Medal, Universal Exhibition 1878”, and blue stamp “J. Kuhn, Paris”. Card with rounded corners; very slight wear to one corner, otherwise without significant defect.

The Nadar mount, whose advertising records the gold medal awarded at the 1878 Universal Exhibition, establishes a date after 1878...

Photographic portrait of Eugène Delacroix

Original photograph on albumen paper, in carte de visite format, mounted on a board. Some small foxing.

Rare copy of this photograph, only found at Carnavalet, Louvre and Orsay museums.

Original photographic portrait of Sigmund Freud, in silver print made later by Engelman from the original negative.

After the Night of Broken Glass, the young Jewish photographer Edmund Engelman (1907-2000) fled to the United States leaving behind his precious but compromising negatives of his clandestine photography. He did not recover them until after the Second World War, in 1952, from the psychoanalyst's daughter Anna Freud.
Handwritten inscription signed by photographer Edmund Engelman in the lower margin of the photograph: “à Nadine Nimier Cordialement Edmund Engelman” (“To Nadine Nimier Sincerely Edmund Engelman”).
Nadine Nimier was...

Ink and watercolour portrait of the poet Paul Verlaine by his friend Marie Crance, bearing the artist's signature and the handwritten caption “Paul Verlaine à l'hôpital”.

A single sheet, presented in a frame with a mount. An inscription on the back of the frame—“written in the margin (by the framer): ‘For Messrs. Thénot and Lercey, 25 April 1894’”—provides a likely terminus post quem for the drawing.
 
Marie Crance (1860–1945), nicknamed Marie-aux-fleurs, was at the time the companion of the illustrator Frédéric-Auguste Cazals, whom she married in 1912. A laundress, maid, and occasional singer in the poet’s favourite...

Rare photographic portrait of Amélie Destouches, aunt of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, in cabinet card format on albumen print mounted on cardboard from Studio Louis.
Manuscript captions "Suzannica 3 ans, Bucarest ce 14 juin 1877" ["Suzannica 3 years old, Bucharest this 14th June 1877"] and "Zenon Zawirski" in another hand, on verso.
The portrait was taken by Studio Louis, at 127 Calea Mosilor in Bucharest.
 
At twenty-four, Amélie married the wealthy Romanian Zenon Zawirski, who poses beside her with their daughter Zenone Zawirska, then three years old. Céline devoted an unflattering portrait to her in Death on the Installment Plan, borrowing her features...

Original photograph mounted on rigid cardboard, showing Fernand Destouches, father of writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline (top right) posing alongside his brothers René, Georges and Charles - from top to bottom and left to right.
Edges of the rigid cardboard slightly bumped.
 
This portrait of the four Destouches brothers in uniform with laurel collar, dates from their happy schoolboy years at the Le Havre lyceum. The photograph, a true incarnation of a carefree and bygone past, must undoubtedly have held importance in the eyes of the four brothers, who would reproduce as adults the exact pose of this childhood portrait for a second, family portrait, preserved in the collection of...