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Elliott Erwitt(1928-2023)'Provence'
3 – 13 September 2024, 12:00 EDT
Online, New YorkSold for US$10,240 inc. premium
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Elliott Erwitt (1928-2023)
'Provence', 1955
Gelatin silver print, printed later; signed in ink in the margin, signed, titled, and dated in pencil on the reverse, framed, a Boca Raton Museum of Art label on the reverse.
21 1/4 x 14 1/2 in. (54 x 36.8 cm.)
sheet 24 x 19 3/4 in. (61 x 50.2 cm.)
Gelatin silver print, printed later; signed in ink in the margin, signed, titled, and dated in pencil on the reverse, framed, a Boca Raton Museum of Art label on the reverse.
21 1/4 x 14 1/2 in. (54 x 36.8 cm.)
sheet 24 x 19 3/4 in. (61 x 50.2 cm.)
Footnotes
Provenance
The photographer to Richard Coplan, circa 2012
Literature
Sam Holmes, Elliott Erwitt: Photographs and Anti-Photographs (Greenwich, 1972), p. 127
Sean Callahan, Masters of Contemporary Photography, Elliott Erwitt, The Private Experience: Personal Insights of a Professional Photographer (Los Angeles, 1974), cover; p. 61 (variant)
Elliott Erwitt, Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best (Kempen, 2009), p. 95
Exhibited
Elliott Erwitt: Photographs from the Collection of Richard Coplan and Martin R. Mallinger, Boca Raton Museum of Art, 9 November 2014 - 11 January 2015
The Art of Observation: The Best of Photographer Elliott Erwitt, D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts / Springfield Museums, 9 November 2019 - 12 January 2020; Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, 17 September - 31 December 2022
Note
In 1955, Elliott Erwitt was hired by the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach to take photographs for the French Tourism Office, an assignment that took him to France for a few weeks each spring for six years. Agency president Bill Bernbach recalls the making of this particularly popular image:
"While we were on location in the South of France, I noticed how often people went by carrying a loaf of bread. We decided to make up an ad on the spot. Our driver, who was also serving as Elliott's assistant, became the model. We went and got his nephew and put them on a bicycle and shot it that day. Elliott was able to grasp the idea quickly and turn it into a documentary photograph." (Elliott Erwitt, The Private Experience, p. 60)
In his 1974 monograph on Erwitt, Sean Callahan elaborated on this picture: "The photograph ... retains a spontaneous charm in spite of the fact that the assistant had to pedal back and forth nearly 30 times until Erwitt was satisfied with the precise composition. The boughs of the trees overhead allow a funnel of light to direct the viewer's eye to the rider, whose legs are curiously cocked askew to suggest the way a provincial farmer, not a professional cyclist, would ride. The tiny passenger is perfect framed against his uncle's broad back. And all this came together at a precise focusing spot that Erwitt had marked with a stone on the pavement." (Elliott Erwitt, The Private Experience, p. 60)