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Dimensions: measurements note 9 by 6½ in. (22.9 by 16.5 cm.)

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Provenance: Collection of Madame Gilberte Brassaï, the photographer's widow, ParisEdwynn Houk Gallery, Chicago, 1988Acquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1989

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Literature: Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 61 (this print)

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Notes: This early print by Brassaï, originally in the collection of the photographer's widow, is characteristic of his 1930s work, when his subjects were the people and places of Montparnasse and Montmartre at night. Au Bal Musette, Les "Quatre Saisons," Rue de Lappe pictures a couple dancing in one of Paris's many public dance halls. As the couple dances out of the frame on the left, they move into the reflection of the mirror, providing the viewer a glimpse into Paris de Nuit. After training as a painter in the art academies of Budapest and Berlin, Brassaï moved to Paris in 1923. The photographer said of these early days, 'during my first years in Paris, beginning in 1924, I lived at night, going to bed at sunrise, getting up at sunset, wandering about the city from Montparnasse to Montmartre' (The Secret Paris of the 1930s, 1976, unpaginated). His desire to capture the secrets of Paris at night led him to photography in 1929. The evocative images he produced inspired his friend, the writer Henry Miller, to call him the "eye of Paris." As of this writing, no other prints of this image have been located.