Francis Joseph Bruguiere

FRANCIS BRUGUIÈRE (1879-1945) Experiment, from 'The Way', c. 1925 gelatin silver print signed in ink (on the reverse of the flush-mount) image/flush-mount: 13½ x 10 3/8in. (34.3 x 26.4cm.) A very private face in a private room. Cecil Beaton Enyeart, Bruguière: His Photographs and His Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 1977, pl. 27, p. 47; Modernist Masterworks to 1925 from 'the deLIGHTed eye', A Private Collection, International Center of Photography, New York, 1985, cover Modernist Masterworks to 1925 from 'the deLIGHTed eye', A Private Collection, International Center of Photography, New York, May 15-June 16, 1985 This photograph, which dates from approximately 1925, was taken by Bruguière in New York during the last year he worked on his first experimental film, The Way. The image is both powerful, dramatic and macabre, with five overlapping views of the sitter's face wearing a frenzied expression filling the frame. Conceived as a film about different psychic states, The Way was never completed because its principal actor Sebastian 'Baron' Droste died unexpectedly during filming. The extraordinary stills from the film, however, are now recognized as the first surrealist works by an American photographer, coinciding with the publication in France of André Breton's first Surrealist Manifesto.

BRUGUIERE, FRANCIS (1879-1945) "Stackhope Figure at Rotunda, Palace of Fine Arts, Panama Pacific International Exposition." Silver print, 13 1/2x10 3/4 inches (34.3x27.3 cm.), with Bruguiere's signature on print recto and his signature and the date, all in pencil, on mount recto; a numeric notation and title, in pencil, in an unknown hand, on mount verso. 1915 Estimate $1,500-2,500

Francis Joseph Brugui�re (American, 1879-1945) Elizabeth Harris , 1913 Gelatin silver print, titled and dated in pencil with the artist's 'San Francisco' stamp on the verso, in very good condition aside from small emulsion losses in image, scuff in lower left quadrant, not framed. 9 x 6 7/8in

Francis Bruguiere (1879-1945), American GRACE CHRISTIE, APRIL 16, 1937 Painted press print; titled in pencil verso, numbered 766 in white in the negative top right, artist stamp verso, N.E.A reference stamp verso. Unframed. 9.50" x 7.25", 17.10 cm x 23.50 cm Francis Bruguiere was a painter and photographer whose photographs were featured in publications such as, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Harper’’’’ s Bazaar and the New York Theatre Guild. Est. $125 / 150

FRANCIS BRUGUIÈRE 1879-1945 LIGHT STUDY ('FAR AWAY IN A GRAY DISTANCE. . . ') 10,000—15,000 USD measurements measurements note 9 1/4 by 6 3/4 in. (23.5 by 17.2 cm.) initialed in pencil on the image, captioned 'Far away in a gray distance this figure begins to glimmer in all the variable warm lights of the color we call salmon, moving always nearer into greater clarity and brilliance' in ink on the reverse, 1921 From a group of Bruguière's studies of Clavilux projections in a private collection. Other images from the collection were offered in these rooms on 26 April 2001 (Sale 7623, Lot 153) and 6 October 1999 (Sale 7348, Lot 96) Other studies by Bruguière made from projections by Thomas Wilfred's Clavilux are reproduced in James Enyeart's Bruguière: His Photographs and His Life on pages 60 and 61 San Francisco-born Bruguière first studied photography with Frank Eugene. His first efforts were made under the banner of Pictorialism, and he was an exhibitor in Alfred Stieglitz's seminal Photo-Secession exhibition in Buffalo in 1910. His work in the 'teens and 1920s became increasingly more experimental. In 1921, Bruguière undertook a series of photographs of projections made by Thomas Wilfred's 'color organ.' The organ, or 'Clavilux,' was an instrument that projected beams of colored light whose intensity, hue, and motion were controlled by a panel resembling the keyboard of an organ. The resulting abstract lightscapes, projected onto a curved screen in a specially constructed auditorium, were remarkable for their three-dimensionality. László Moholy-Nagy (see Lot 139) commended Wilfred's 'highly developed' work with the Clavilux in his 1922 essay Produktion—Reproduktion, published in De Stijl , No. 7 (pp. 97-101). Bruguière found in the Clavilux an opportunity to further pursue his investigations into the dramatic potential of light – work that had begun with his experience as a theatrical photographer. His light abstractions were exhibited in a one-man show at Der Sturm gallery in Berlin in 1928 and in the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart in 1929. Bruguiere's inscription on the reverse of this photograph reads, 'Far away in a gray distance this figure begins to glimmer in all the variable warm lights of the color we call salmon, moving always nearer into greater clarity and brilliance.'