Pierre Dubreuil 1872-1944

The Collection of Tom Jacobson, San Diego, California

Christie's New York, 8 April 1998, Sale 8884, Lot 251

Buffalo, New York, Albright Gallery, International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, 1910

Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Pierre Dubreuil, Photographs 1896 – 1935, 1987

San Diego, The Museum of Photographic Arts, Pierre Dubreuil Rediscovered, 1988; and thereafter to Alliance Française, New York, 1989; and The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1990

Santa Fe, New Mexico, Museum of Fine Arts, Proto-Modern Photography, 1992

Tom Jacobson, Pierre Dubreuil, Photographs 1896 – 1935 (San Diego, 1987, in conjunction with the exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou), pl. 2 (this print)

It is believed that only one other print of this image exists: an unsigned printing-out-paper proof. 

Pierre Dubreuil was perhaps the most accomplished Pictorialist photographer of his day, in terms of the sheer imagination inherent in his images and his technical mastery of the photographic medium.  Like most of his photographic colleagues, Dubreuil had experimented with the full range of processes then available, including platinum, carbon, and gum bichromate.  In 1904, however, he discovered the Rawlins oil process.  While this process was a demanding one, it had the advantage of allowing Dubreuil a great deal of control over the final appearance of his photographs; the resultant prints had the added benefit of being permanent.  Dubreuil quickly mastered the intricacies of the process, and used it throughout his career.   

While Dubreuil exhibited his work widely, there are exceedingly few surviving examples of his work.  On the eve of the second World War, experiencing financial difficulties and concerned for the safety of his life's work, Dubreuil sold his negatives and many of his prints to the Gevaert photographic company in Belgium. The Gevaert factory was subsequently bombed during the war, and Dubreuil’s work was completely destroyed. 

This print of Eléphantaisie was one of 6 Dubreuil photographs exhibited in the Open Section of Alfred Stieglitz’s monumental 1910 International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography in Buffalo.  Dubreuil made this image with the Dallmeyer Bergheim lens, the first soft- focus lens available.  The lens’s telephoto, variable focal length capabilities allowed him the take this image from quite a distance, and effectively compress the space between the elephant sculpture and the Eiffel Tower in a way that would have been novel for 1908.