Maurice Tabard 1897-1984

Collection of Roger Parry

Acquired from Roger Parry's widow by a private New York collector, 1981

Sotheby's New York, 26 April 2001, Sale 7633, Lot 121

Other prints of this image:

Nancy Hall-Duncan, Photographic Surrealism (The New Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, 1979), cover

Pierre Gassmann, Rosalind Krauss, and Caroline Elissagaray, Maurice Tabard (Paris, 1987), p. 97 (reversed)

Maria Morris Hambourg and Christopher Phillips, The New Vision: Photography Between the World Wars, Ford Motor Company Collection (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989), pl. 68 (reversed), cf. p. 189

Rosalind Krauss and Jane Livingston, L'Amour Fou: Photography & Surrealism (New York, 1985), pl. 23 (reversed)

This photograph was originally in Roger Parry's collection.  Parry worked as Tabard's darkroom assistant in the late 1920s, and the two frequently utilized similar visual motifs and even shared negatives when making their photomontages.  Gloves and hands, for instance, can be found in both photographers' work during this period (cf. Des Années Folles aux Années Noires, pp. 34, 71, 122; L'Amour Fou, fig. 74; Roger Parry, le Météore Fabuleaux, pp. 44 and 47).

As of this writing, three other prints of this image have been located.  Two of these, in the Ford Motor Company John Waddell Collection and the Robert Shapazian Collection, are reversed versions.  The third, in the Roger Therond Collection, shares the same orientation as the print offered here.  It is interesting to note that Tabard produced a nearly identical image, utilizing the compositional elements of the gloves and angular figure of light and shadow, in which Roger Parry occupies the place of the nude (cf. Christie's New York, 9 October 1997, Lot 280).