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(French, 1857-1927) SAINT-CLOUD Atget number "1104" inscribed in negative Berenice Abbott collection stamp on verso of mount titled and numbered "St. Cloud 1104" in pencil on verso of mount vintage arrowroot print mounted by Abbott on board 63/4 x 81/2 in. (17.1 x 21.6 cm) 1922 PROVENANCE Collection Berenice Abbott, New York Christie's NEW YORK, Sale Number 6584, April 26, 1988, 69 Private Collection, NORTH AMERICA LITERATURE John Szarkowski and Maria Morris Hambourg, THE WORK OF ATGET: VOLUME III, New York, 1983, p. 110, pl. 74 (illustrated) Jean-Claude Lemagny, ATGET: THE PIONEER, New York, 2000, p. 49 (illustrated) Two of the most authoritative collections of Atget photographs, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, have published prints of this image with conflicting dates. For approximately 50 years, it was nearly impossible to date images from Atget's 30-year career. Since 1980, however, when Maria Morris Hambourg, working primarily with the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, cracked Atget's code, the task has become significantly easier. The four-volume set on MoMA's Atget collection, THE WORK OF ATGET, includes a generally accepted guide to dating Atget's prints according to negative numbers. The Bibliothèque Nationale assigned the range 1909-1911 to their print of this image, perhaps looking up the negative number in the wrong series. The MoMA print is dated to 1922, and further specified as 7:00 pm at the end of May. The year seems right, but the trees lack spring foliage. The combination of the negative number, and other exposures most likely made the same afternoon at the Parc de St. Cloud, have led us to assign the date of March 1922, perhaps 5:00 pm, accounting for the late-winter light. The Parc de St. Cloud is traversed by double rows of trees. When one of the trees dies, the gardeners often plant a sapling to fill in the row. At other times they cut down all of the trees to start over again. Today sections of the Parc de St. Cloud are identical to this photograph, while other parts display new rows of saplings. These shadows of trees from outside the frame play a significant compositional role. Entwined with the visible trunks and branches, these shadows writhe with art nouveau rhythms, at odds with the orderly rows of 17th-century garden design.
