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Lot Essay
Lisa Fonssagrives, who married Irving Penn in 1950, the year this image was made, was his greatest muse and the subject of some of his finest fashion images.
'Lisa with Roses' has achieved a deserved status as one of Mr. Penn's most emblematic images - a fashion study that distils all that marks him out as so singular a force in post-war photography. Here we observe a perfect balance between elegance of line, of gesture, and of detail and absolute integrity of execution; this integrity is evidenced in the absence of the artifice too often associated with fashion and in the wilful simplicity of the photographer's technique.
'When Penn traveled to Paris in June 1950', explain Virginia Heckert and Anne Lacoste, 'the editors of Vogue rented an old photography school on the top floor of a courtyard building on rue Vaugirard for him. Natural light flooded in from a bank of windows and skylight onto a backdrop created by a discarded theater curtain of painted canvas. It was in this simple setting that Penn created images for the pages of Vogue magazine, including some of the most iconic fashion photographs and portraits of cultural figures of his career.' (Irving Penn: Small Trades, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009, p. 10)
'Lisa with Roses' has achieved a deserved status as one of Mr. Penn's most emblematic images - a fashion study that distils all that marks him out as so singular a force in post-war photography. Here we observe a perfect balance between elegance of line, of gesture, and of detail and absolute integrity of execution; this integrity is evidenced in the absence of the artifice too often associated with fashion and in the wilful simplicity of the photographer's technique.
'When Penn traveled to Paris in June 1950', explain Virginia Heckert and Anne Lacoste, 'the editors of Vogue rented an old photography school on the top floor of a courtyard building on rue Vaugirard for him. Natural light flooded in from a bank of windows and skylight onto a backdrop created by a discarded theater curtain of painted canvas. It was in this simple setting that Penn created images for the pages of Vogue magazine, including some of the most iconic fashion photographs and portraits of cultural figures of his career.' (Irving Penn: Small Trades, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009, p. 10)