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• Issue #148
• Article

Sotheby's has formally announced the sale in Paris on Saturday, November 15, 2008 of what it is calling "the final installment of the photographic collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes--one of the most important private collections of photographs of the 19th century ever assembled." The E-Photo Newsletter reported on the scheduling of this event in July, and now we can share more details.

The sale will be a much smaller sale than previous ones and will contain approximately 180 lots, with an overall estimate of 2.2-3 million euro or about $3.2-3.5 million, without the addition of the buyer's premium (now up to 25% at Sotheby's). None of the estimates by Sotheby's below include the buyer's premium. The current dollar/euro exchange rate is $1.47 to the euro. As in previous sales, this auction will feature a selection of French photography dating back to the earliest photographic reproduction processes and includes work by such great 19th-century masters as Edouard Baldus, Bisson Frères, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, Henri Le Secq, Gustave Le Gray and Charles Nègre. Taken together, the collection covers all the major themes of 19th-century photography, including portraits, monuments and the landscapes of France, the Middle East and elsewhere.

The names Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes have been celebrated by the international market since the first part of their collection was sold by Sotheby's in London on 27 October 1999. The 287-lot sale set new records for a sing;e photography sale and for a single owner sale, totaling nearly $12.5 million or £7,430,693 (11,582,000 euro). It also broke the record for a single photograph at auction at about $850,000 (£507,500) for Gustave Le Gray's Grande Vague, Sète.

Parts 2 and 3, sold by Sotheby's in Paris on March 21-22, 2002, were devoted to Charles Nègre and French primitive photography. The sale brought 11,814,210 euro or about $11 million in total, with the first ever image printed from a photographic process by Nicéphore Niépce, the inventor of photography, selling for 489,750 euro, and high prices for photographs by Charles Nègre, Victor Regnault and Edouard Baldus.

Part 4, which is to be offered in Paris this November, features calotype prints and daguerreotypes by French masters of primitive photography; the work of leading photographers from the heyday of the glass negative and albumen print; and valuable documents illustrating photographic technique.

Highlights include an important group of 13 daguerreotypes by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, with views of France, Egypt, Italy and Greece (estimates between 10,000-70,000 euro); a full-plate daguerreotype by Baron Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros, which shows his own studio (estimate 80,000-120,000 euro); a very rare selection of paper negatives and salt paper prints (estimates 12,000-25,000 euro) by John Beasley Greene; and a study of an oak tree in the Forest of Fontainebleau (estimate 50,000-70,000 euro) by Gustave Le Gray.

The sale also contains a series of exceptional portraits taken by Charles Nègre at the Imperial Asylum in Vincennes, along with heliogravures of his celebrated studies of French Gothic monuments; and a remarkable array of clichés-verre, a photographic engraving technique adopted by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and the Barbizon School of painters.

The sale will start at 10 am and 2 pm on Saturday, November 15th. Previews will be held in New York City (October 9-14), London (October 23-29) and Paris (November 12-14).