Portrait de profil

A fine period print, signed in ink by Paul Éluard on the mount, and by the photographer, with his address and full name in the lower margin.

In his Paris studio on the rue de Penthièvre, Henri Martinie produced, between 1920 and 1940, an exceptional body of portraits of French and foreign writers visiting Paris: from the Surrealists to James Joyce and Francis Scott Fitzgerald, few were overlooked. The Studio Martinie also worked regularly at the Assemblée nationale, where it held a reserved position, producing numerous series of portraits of deputies up until the 1950s.

A celebrated portrait of the poet. A similar print was in the collection of Geneviève and Jean-Paul Kahn (Pierre Bergé & Associés, Mille nuits de rêves, November 2019, no. 144).