Émile Zola Photographer

Auction: Monday, 4 December 2017, 2pm

7 Rond-Point des Champs Elysées
75008 Paris

Online catalogue: www.artcurial.com

Public Exhibition:
Thursday 30 November, 11am-7pm
Friday 1December, 11am-7pm
Saturday 2 December, 11am-6pm

Contact:
Lorena de la Torre
ldelatorre@arturial.com
+33 (0)1 42 99 16 58

Artcurial presents at auction an exceptional photography collection by the famous French writer Émile Zola, leader of the naturalism literary movement.

Worldwide renowned for his great humanistic commitment with the article J'accuse published during the Dreyfus affair, his activity as an amateur photographer is less known to the general public.

Besides his immense literary work, in the last years of his life (from 1894 - 1902), Émile Zola practiced photography as an enlightened amateur.

As he personally knew great photographers of the 19th century (Nadar, Carjat, Pierre Petit), he discovered the practice of that medium during his vacation in Royan during the 1888 summer. A few years later, he immersed himself in what will become a real passion for him. He bought several cameras, and set up not less than three photographic laboratories in his numerous residences. He photographed his daily family life, his double life, but also his friends, his dogs, the bike rides, his travels abroad, his exile in England or even the Universal Exhibition of 1900.

The photographs presented at auction come from his grandson François Émile-Zola’s former collection include:

* two exceptional daguerreotypes of Émile Zola as a child
* 7 albums made by the writer himself, including a beautiful one offered to Jeanne, the mother of his children, as a tribute to them
* an important selection of vintage prints by Émile Zola covering all the years of his photographic practice
* numerous portraits of Émile Zola by the greatest studios of this time
* numerous self-portraits of the writer
* negative glass plates
* cameras and laboratory coats

This important archive was shown during several museum exhibitions and displayed in the reference book by François Émile-Zola and Massin, "Zola Photographer", Denoël, Paris, 1979, reprinted at Hoëbeke in 1990.