Irving Penn b. 1917

platinum-palladium print, flush-mounted to aluminum, signed, titled, dated, numbered '2/25,' and with technical, edition, and copyright information by the photographer in pencil and with his Condé Nast copyright and edition stamps on the reverse, matted, 1949, printed in 1979, no. 2 in an edition of 25 in platinum metals 

Other prints of this image:

Irving Penn, Moments Preserved (New York, 1960), p. 143

John Szarkowski, Irving Penn (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 41

Irving Penn, Passage, A Work Record (New York, 1991), p. 76

Colin Westerbeck, ed., Irving Penn: A Career in Photography (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1997, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 77  

Merry A. Foresta and William F. Stapp, Irving Penn: Master Images, The Collections of the National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D. C.: National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery, 1990, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 13

Irving Penn, A Notebook at Random (New York, 2004), p. 113

 

This image of a model drinking champagne was originally published in the October 1949 issue of American Vogue, with the caption, 'The New Romantics... A new enchantment, the feather-etched hat for evening. Best with bare shoulders, long black gloves, a short dinner dress. Made to order, or burnt ostrich feathers on net...'

Mary Jane Russell (1926-2003), the 'M. J. R.' of Girl Drinking, was a leading model of the 1940s and 1950s.  A native of Teaneck, New Jersey, she joined the Ford Model Agency in 1948.  For the next 13 years, she appeared on many Vogue and Harper's Bazaar magazine covers and worked with the most innovative fashion photographers of the 'New Look' era, including not only Irving Penn, but also Richard Avedon, William Klein, and Louise Dahl-Wolfe.