Pierre Dubreuil

oil print, the photographer's monogram on the image, signed, titled, and annotated 'Bruxelles,' 'Oil print,' 'London, Salon,' and 'M. S. L. P. -- M. C. P. S. A.' in ink and with the Museum of Science and Industry's collection stamp, label, and accession number in red crayon on the reverse, framed, circa 1929

The photographer to Dr. Max Thorek

Gift of Dr. Max Thorek to the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, December 1935

Sotheby's New York, 11 October 2005, Sale 8115, Lot 112

Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Imagination to Image, April - September 1999; and traveling thereafter to The Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, September - December  2000;  and The Montclair, New Jersey, Art Museum, January - April 2001

For another image from this series, see Tom Jacobson, Pierre Dubreuil, Photographs 1896 – 1935 (San Diego, 1987, in conjunction with the exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou), fig. 23

This beautiful, richly-toned print is on double-weight paper with a matte surface and is in excellent condition. The level of detail, particularly in the textured background, is remarkable; and the subtly shifting tones are very skillfully rendered. On the reverse are the remnants of 10 light paper tape hinges from a prior matting, one of which interferes with the quotation mark before the photographer's title.
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There are believed to be six or seven prints of Spectacles extant, two of them in the collection of a European museum.

In addition to the image offered here, Dubreuil executed a number of similar still-life studies utilizing spectacles.  One variant is illustrated in the above-referenced book by Dubreuil scholar Tom Jacobson.  Another variant, entitled Luminous Sketch, was offered in these rooms in the sale of Property from the Collection of Graham Nash (25 April 1990, Sale 6003, Lot 139).  A print made from the same negative as the version offered here, but presented by Dubreuil in a horizontal format, was sold in the sale of the Barry Friedman Collection (Christie's New York, 5 October 1998, Sale 9026, Lot 46). 

Dubreuil, an expert at photographic lighting, and directly attuned to a lens's capability to affect the path of light, clearly enjoyed experimenting with spectacles as subject matter.  His various arrangements, in which one or two pairs of spectacles interact with light, are full of the photographer's characteristic imagination.  The print of Spectacles offered here cleverly documents the basic elements of photography: lenses and light. 

During Dubreuil's lifetime, this version of Spectacles was exhibited in 8 International Kerstsalon, Antwerp, in 1934 and 1935; Il Salon International, Charleroi; and the retrospective of Dubreuil's work at the Royal Photographic Society, London, in 1935.  The image was also included in the two major modern Dubreuil exhibitions: Pierre Dubreuil, Photographs 1896 – 1935 at the Musée d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 1987; and Pierre Dubreuil Rediscovered, at The Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, in 1988, and traveling to Alliance Française, New York, and The Detroit Institute of Arts, in 1989-90.