[Photographie] Portrait photographique de Maupassant

Name: (Guy de MAUPASSANT) • Photographic portrait of Guy de Maupassant • [Photographie] Portrait photographique de Maupassant • 1888
Brand: Nadar
SKU: 92029
Price: 3000 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Guy de MAUPASSANT

Photographic portrait of Guy de Maupassant

Paul Nadar|Paris s. d. [1888 - 1900]|11 x 16.4 cm|Photograph|Autre

€3,000

⬨ 92029

Paris, Nadar studio, negative circa 1888, print circa 1900-1924. Cabinet-card photograph.

Albumen print mounted on the Nadar studio card. Maupassant is shown bust-length in left profile. The mount bears the printed name "P. Nadar" at the head and the studio signature printed in red in the lower margin. The verso gives the addresses 51 rue d'Anjou and 53 rue des Mathurins, together with Paul Nadar's distinctions at the 1900 Exposition Universelle: hors concours, member of the jury, Class XII.

These details make it possible to distinguish clearly between the date of the sitting and that of the present print. The negative is generally dated to 1888, although 1890 has also been proposed, whereas the mount cannot predate the 1900 Exposition Universelle. The present photograph is therefore a later print made by the studio from an earlier negative, probably between 1900 and the transfer of the rue d'Anjou premises in 1924. Paul Nadar, who had worked full-time in the studio from 1876, had assumed its artistic direction by 1880 and thereafter signed most of its portraits.

A label mounted on the verso reads: "Gaston Bernard / 174 rue de Rivoli / Paris / Estampes", recording the photograph's passage through this Paris establishment.

At least two closely related poses of Maupassant from this sitting are known, one showing his right profile and the other his left, as here. In the latter, the face turned almost entirely away from the viewer, together with the moustache and sharply defined line of forehead and nose, creates an immediately recognisable silhouette. The image was to become one of the writer's most familiar photographic portraits.

The paradox is particularly striking since Maupassant consistently resisted the public dissemination of his likeness. He had little taste for the construction of a public image of the writer and explicitly protested against the reproduction of his portraits. Octave Uzanne, who had known him personally, reproduced in 1902 an autograph note in which Maupassant expressed his position unequivocally:

"I have made it an absolute rule never to allow my portrait to be published whenever I can prevent it. The exceptions have occurred only by surprise. Our works belong to the public, but not our faces."

This reluctance partly accounts for the relative scarcity of his photographic iconography. Less than a decade after Maupassant's death, Uzanne already observed that authentic likenesses of the writer consisted essentially of a small number of photographs taken full-face, in profile or three-quarter view. He singled out the portrait of 1888 as the one in which he most readily recognised his lost friend: the Maupassant of Le Horla and Sur l'eau, then at the height of his literary fame.

The photograph belongs precisely to this period. Pierre et Jean and Sur l'eau appeared in 1888, while Bel-Ami, published three years earlier, had already established Maupassant before a wide readership. The Nadar profile thus fixes the writer at the moment when his face might naturally have become that of a literary celebrity, precisely when he was attempting to prevent such a transformation.

The present print is all the more revealing for having been produced after his death. The negative retained by the studio continued to be used after 1900 on a mount now advertising Paul Nadar's latest distinctions. The image Maupassant had wished to withhold from public curiosity survived him and entered the commercial repertoire of a photographic house celebrated for its portraits of prominent figures. A photographic sitting had gradually become an icon.

A rare cabinet-card portrait of Maupassant, printed after 1900 from a negative made circa 1888 by the Nadar studio. Of the writer who insisted that "our works belong to the public, but not our faces", this photograph was destined to preserve one of the most recognisable faces of all.