Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue

THE DONATION
« It had become a hopeless situation… two rooms full of photographs… I was afraid of burglars, afraid that the collection would be scattered after my death. It needed to remain as a whole that began in 1902. »

In 1979 Jacques Henri Lartigue donated his entire photography collection to the French nation and entrusts the “Association des Amis de Jacques Henri Lartigue” known as «Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue» to preserve, enhance and promote his work.

THE COLLECTION
The «Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue» is the sole administrator of property rights and it thus insures the influence of Lartigue’s work throughout the world by doing the following :

• putting together and hiring out “ready-to-install” exhibitions

• selling collector prints, taken care of abroad by sponsor galleries

• preserving and keeping an inventory of the collection by storage, restoration and filing techniques

THE COLLECTION
• 135 albums (format 52 x 36 cm/20 x 14 ins.) containing the original prints with captions, as made or collected by Jacques Henri Lartigue. They also include prints by other photographers whose work he particularly appreciated.
The albums form a chronological sequence, starting in 1880 (with his family’s album) and ending with his death in 1986.

• All the black-and-white and color negatives: prints on glass or film, positive and negative stereoscopic plates, panoramas, autochrome plates and color slides.

• All his personal cameras.

Albums, negatives and cameras are kept in the Saint-Cyr Fort in Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines (78) along with some of the other nation’s photography collections (such as Nadar, Kertesz…).

• his typed and handwritten diary (kept from 1911 to 1986) that contains life memories, private and inner thoughts… sizeable excerpts were published in three volumes which are now out of print. (see bibliography).

• 20 paintings are stored in the “Centre d’Art Jacques Henri Lartigue” in l’Isle-Adam (95). Jacques and Florette were friends with the mayor at the time, Michel Poniatowski, and they donated more than 300 paintings to the city between 1985 and 1993.
http://musee.ville-isle-adam.fr/

After her death in 2000, Florette Lartigue bequeathed her personal property to The French Foundation in order for it to be used for projects dedicated to Jacques Henri Lartigue such as exhibits, colloquiums or films.