PHOTOGRAPHS
Lartigue, Jacques Henri
France (1894 - 1986)
The Beach at Villerville
1906, printed later
Gelatin silver print
10 15/16 x 14 3/16 in. (27.8 x 36 cm) image size; 20 1/8 x 15 11/16 in. (51.1 x 39.8 cm) sheet size
Monsen Study Collection of Photography, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen
FA 79.115

The son of upper-middle-class parents living on the outskirts of Paris, Lartigue began to take photographs at the age of seven, when he received a small view camera as a gift. He recorded automobile races and airplane flights, crowds on Paris boulevards and his own family at play. Many of these surviving pictures were created as illustrations for his childhood diaries. This image, made by Lartigue at the age of 12 while on a beach excursion with his parents, is typical of his work in that he uses the camera to preserve the most fleeting moments in his day-to-day life with an impressionist’s command of pictorial composition. Lartigue later studied at the Académie Julian and worked as a painter for much of his life.

-- Label copy for The Photographic Impulse: Selections from the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, July 12 to November 10, 2002.






The son of upper-middle-class parents living on the outskirts of Paris, Lartigue began to take photographs at the age of seven, when he received a small view camera as a gift. He recorded automobile races and airplane flights, crowds on Paris boulevards and his own family at play. Many of these surviving pictures were created as illustrations for his childhood diaries. This image, made by Lartigue at the age of 12 while on a beach excursion with his parents, is typical of his work in that he uses the camera to preserve the most fleeting moments in his day-to-day life with an impressionist’s command of pictorial composition. Lartigue later studied at the Académie Julian and worked as a painter for much of his life.

-- Label copy for The Photographic Impulse: Selections from the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, July 12 to November 10, 2002.