FRÈRES SÉEBERGER Album or sample book entitled Les Chapeaux

Sale 2135 - Lot 51

Price Realized: $ 4,080

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,500

FRÈRES SÉEBERGER
Album or sample book entitled "Les Chapeaux de Mme. Robert." With 84 photographs of fashionably-attired women strolling about Longchamps and other Parisian locales in Madame Robert's "beaux les chapeaux," many with long plumes. Silver prints, 7x5 inches (17.7x12.7 cm.), with a typewritten caption affixed to mount recto or a handwritten date. Oblong 4to, cloth with title labels affixed to front cover. 1913-14

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originally in the collection of madame robert. In the halcyon days of Belle Epoque Paris the Séeberger brothers--Jules, Louis and Henri--were the first photographers to explore cutting edge fashion as a visual idiom. Their strategy was to show the smart set "in situ," that is, wearing designer fashions while enjoying their active social lives. Before then, models were generally depicted posing indoors, often before a painted backdrop.

The album spans the pre-War period, May 1913 through March 1914, the height of "le beau monde," and depicts women in smart sartorial splendor strutting their summer, fall, winter, and spring outfits. The brothers focused on the upper echelon of French society. Although debonair men in dashing tophats are shown as well, it is the glamorous women in inimitable finery (and at all the right places---racecourses, resorts, and cafés), who steal the shot. As pictures by the brothers regularly appeared in magazines, designers such as Chanel, Hermès and Madame Robert sent their own models to be photographed rubbing elbows with the beautiful people.

A new book about the Seebergers has recently been published: Elegance. The Séeberger Brothers and the Birth of Fashion Photography. (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007).

JPGs are available upon request.