The Invention of Happiness - Jacques Henri Lartigue at Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice

by Jacques Henri Lartigue
© Ministère de la Culture (France),
MAP-AAJHL

(Venice, Italy) Jacques Henri Lartigue was seven-years-old when his father, an amateur photographer, gave him his first camera. But it wouldn't be until he was nearly seventy-years-old that an exhibition at MoMA in New York City and a portfolio in Life magazine marked the real beginning of his international fame for works he had produced more than fifty years before.

Born into a wealthy family on June 13, 1894 in Courbevoie in the region of Île de France, Lartigue grew up in Paris. He took photos of the world around him -- friends and relatives jumping and playing -- everyday life of the affluent middle class. He developed the photos himself, and experimented with double exposure. In 1911 he started keeping a diary, which he would continue to do his entire life.

Dani Lartigue, Aix les Bain, August, 1925
Photograph by Jacques Henri Lartigue
© Ministère de la Culture (France),
MAP-AAJHL

 

By the age of sixteen he started taking photographs of fashionable women strolling along the Bois de Boulogne and other images of La Belle Époque, the period before World War I when Paris was a thriving hub of art and culture and Europe's future was optimistic. He was interested in automobile and horse races, and the wealthy people who attended them. Even though Lartigue would live through the atrocities of two world wars, he continued to photograph the fanciful side of life, preserving moments that delighted him -- the invention of happiness.

In 1919 he married his first wife, Madeleine Messager, known as "Bibi." Two years later she gave birth to their son, Dani.

Madeleine Messager known as Bibi on her honeymoon,
Hotel des Alpes, Chamonix, 1920
Photograph by Jacques Henri Lartigue
© Ministère de la Culture (France),
MAP-AAJHL

 

In the middle of the First World War Lartigue decided to devote himself to painting. He also worked as a set designer, illustrator and still photographer, and started spending time with key personalities from the world of art and cinema.

In 1934, he married his second wife, Marcelle Paolucci, known as "Coco." His illustrations were published in fashion magazines, and he became creative director for important festivals in Cannes, La Baule and Lausanne.

Coco, Deauville, 1938
Photograph by Jacques Henri Lartigue
© Ministère de la Culture (France),
MAP-AAJHL

 

In 1945, he married Flore Orméa, known as "Florette," whom he had met in Monte Carlo in 1942. Florette was twenty-seven years younger than Lartigue, but this wife was a keeper -- they would remain married for nearly fifty years.

Thanks to Albert Plecy, an influential personality of the world of photography in France, in 1954 the Gens d’Images association was founded and Lartigue became its Vice-President. The following year Lartigue exhibited his photographs for the first time at the Galerie d’Orsay, alongside works by Brassaï, Doisneau and Man Ray.

Hands of Florette, 1961
Photograph by Jacques Henri Lartigue
© Ministère de la Culture (France),
MAP-AAJHL

 

But it wasn't until 1962 when Lartigue and Florette spent four months in the United States that his career as a photographer really began to take off. Latigue showed his photographs to Charles Rado of the Rapho agency in New York, who in turn showed them to John Szarkowski, the newly-appointed director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art. Szarkowski jumped at the chance to exhibit the works.

Lartigue was almost seventy, and Szarkowski presented him as the "father" of the renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and the "decisive moment," focusing on Lartigue's pre-WWI photos of La Belle Époque. In 1963, MoMA devoted a one-man show to him entitled The Photographs of Jacques Henri Lartigue. The portfolio of the exhibition was published in Life, the preeminent photo magazine in the U.S., in the same issue devoted to the assassination of President Kennedy -- a huge seller -- establishing Lartigue's reputation in front of a wide audience.

Towards the end of the 1960s, Lartigue met Richard Avedon and Hiro, two of the most influential fashion photographers of the time, who were enthralled by his art. Combining Lartigue's journal entries and his photos, Avedon conceived of the photography book, Diary of a Century, which cemented Lartigue's place in history.

Lartigue died on September 12, 1986 in Nice at the age of ninety-two, leaving us selective memories of a golden age, a rosy reality created by the cherished moments he chose to preserve. The Inventor of Happiness punctuated his signature with a sun.

J.H. Lartigue - Photo: Cat Bauer

 

The exhibition at Tre Oci was originally scheduled to run from March 4 until June 12, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it now coincides with the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition at Palazzo Grassi -- the very same photographer that MoMA linked Lartigue's name to back in 1963 as the "father" of HCB's "decisive moment." This means that you can devote an entire weekend relishing the work of two powerhouse French photographers of the 20th century if you make a trip to La Serenissima.

Henri Cartier-Bresson. Le Grand Jeu runs from July 11 through March 20, 2021 at Palazzo Grassi, which I wrote about in my previous post The Great Game - Henri Cartier-Bresson Master Collection at Palazzo Grassi in Venice. 

The Invention of Happiness - Jacques Henri Lartigue runs from July 11 to January 10, 2021. It is curated by Marion Perceval, Director and Charles-Antoine Revol, Project Manager of the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue, and Denis Curti, artistic director of La Casa dei Tre Oci, and is organized by Civita Tre Venezie and promoted by Fondazione di Venezia in close collaboration with the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue in Paris with the patronage of the French Ministry of Culture. Go to Casa dei Tre Oci for more information -- whose site is now thankfully also in English.

Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog