André Kertész 1894-1985

Estate of André Kertész

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston from the above, 1992

Monterey Museum of Art, Passion and Precision: Photographs from the Collection of Margaret W. Weston, January - April 2003

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., André Kertész, February - May 2005, and traveling to:

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, June - September 2005

New York, International Center of Photography, September - November 2005

This print:

Passion and Precision: Photographs from the Collection of Margaret W. Weston (Monterey Museum of Art, 2003, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 32

Sarah Greenough, Robert Gurbo, and Sarah Kennel, André Kertész (National Gallery of Art, 2005, in conjunction with the exhibition), frontispiece and pl. 65

Other prints of this image:

André Kertész, J'aime Paris: Photographs Since the Twenties (New York, 1974), p. 40

Sandra S. Phillips, David Travis, and Weston J. Naef, André Kertész: Of Paris and New York (New York, 1985), cat. no. 79

Pierre Bonhomme, Sandra Phillips, Jean-Claude Lemagny, and Michel Frizot, André Kertész, ma France (Paris: Ministère de la Culture, 1990, in conjunction with the exhibition), cover

Pierre Borhan, André Kertész, His Life and Work (Boston, 1994), pp. 131 and 282

Pierre Bonhomme, Patrimonie Photographique (Nantes, 1999), p. 211

Kertész took this photograph on the Ile de la Cité after a rare Paris snowfall.  His elevated vantage point, as well as the subject matter - a city park in snow - look forward to images he would take in later decades from his New York apartment near Washington Square Park.  In this early image, Kertész was clearly intrigued by snow's transformative effect, and has created a complex composition in which the massive dark shapes of the trees are surrounded by islands of clear white space.  These, in turn, are bordered by the carefully-swept walking paths with their delicate arcing pattern of broom strokes. 

Vert-Galant was reproduced in Marcel Natkin's 1935 book, L'art de voir et la photographie, where it was cited by Natkin as an example of perfect photographic composition and was fully diagrammed for the benefit of his readers (cf. Of Paris and New York, p. 268).  Beaumont Newhall chose this as one of five images to represent Kertész in the Contemporary Photography section of his seminal 1937 exhibition, Photography: 1839-1937, at The Museum of Modern Art.  More recently, Margaret W. Weston's print of Vert-Galant, offered here, was selected by Sarah Greenough for her definitive Kertész retrospective exhibition originating at the National Gallery of Art.  It is this print that serves as the frontispiece illustration in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition. 

Margaret W. Weston of Carmel, Jane Corkin of Toronto, and Edwynn Houk of Chicago were the first dealers to represent the Estate of André Kertész.  The photograph offered here was selected by Weston for her own collection from the first group of Kertész photographs she handled.