LARTIGUE, JACQUES-HENRI (-CHARLES-AUGUSTE)

born , June 13, 1894, Courbevoie, near Paris died Sept. 12, 1986, Nice, Fr. French painter and photographer particularly noted for photographs dating from his boyhood that have a beguiling spontaneity, freshness, and joyful humour. Born into a prosperous French family Lartigue was given his first camera at the age of seven, a large plate camera that he operated by standing on a stool. His distress at not being able to capture motion with the cumbersome machine resulted in his being given a hand camera, a Brownie No. 2, for the following Christmas. Lartigue's boyhood photographs were almost always candids taken of his family and friends. His upbringing in an upper-middle-class situation allowed him varied and interesting scenes for his pictures. For the next decade Lartigue enthusiastically photographed such subjects as automobile races, fashionable ladies at the seashore and the park, and kite flying. These photographs, with their informal approach to everyday subjects, reveal his free spirit and love of life, rather than a concern for photographic technique and craft. After they were finally discovered and published in the early 1960s, his photographs were acclaimed in part precisely because of his departure from the formal, posed portraits that had been typical of earlier photographers. Lartigue's boyhood diary of photos, notes, and drawings, as well as his documentation of World War I, display an ingenuous charm. Lartigue's interest in photography waned after the war in favour of painting, although he continued to make photographs for the rest of his life. He was made Chevalier de la Lgion d'honneur. A collection of his work, Diary of a Century, was published in 1970. Later collections of Lartigue's work include Les femmes aux cigarettes (1980; Women Holding Cigarettes) and Les autochromes de J.-H. Lartigue, 19121927 (1980; The Autochromes of J.H. Lartigue).