[WHISTLER] DORNAC, Paul Cardon, dit (1858-1941)

[WHISTLER] DORNAC, Paul Cardon, dit (1858-1941)

Original photograph on albumen paper mounted on thick cardboard
[Paris, c. 1895 ?], 122 x 177 mm
Framed in walnut (268 × 323 mm), with a beige mount and 92% museum glass
In fine condition throughout

Very rare print of the American Impressionist painter in his Parisian studio

Whistler was one of Proust’s principal inspirations for the character of Elstir in In Search of Lost Time

Whistler’s pose, with legs crossed, one hand resting on his knee, and his face in profile, gaze absent, conveys an attitude at once nonchalant and highly controlled. On the table facing him, one can make out a heap of papers and pieces of chalk left in disarray. Most striking, in the background, is that the artist has taken care to turn each of his canvases around so that they cannot be seen.

Active from the late 1880s until the First World War, the brilliant Dornac specialised in portraits of notable figures photographed not in the studio but in their private spaces, at home or in their places of work, following a principle of contextualisation that admitted only rare exceptions. He is the author of the series Nos contemporains chez eux (1887-1917), which comprises more than four hundred photographs of major figures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries drawn from the literary, artistic, musical, scientific and political spheres.