Pierre Dubreuil

Background

Pierre Dubreuil was born on March 5, 1872, in Lille, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, into a wealthy family, well established in the wallpaper trade.

Education

In 1888 Pierre joined the Jesuit College of Saint-Joseph in Lille and started to take pictures with a half-plate camera aged sixteen.

Career

After serving for three years in the Saint-Omer Dragoons Pierre Dubreuil started working with the photographer Louis-Jean Delton, who specialized in horse subjects. In the Lille Photographic Society, Pierre met Robert Pauli who initiated him to the carbon and platinum printing techniques.

Dubreuil's recognition first came in 1896, when his painting "Dark Clarity" was shown in Brussels. Subsequently, Dubreuil exhibited five prints at the Photo-Club de Paris, and by the turn of the century was internationally acclaimed, even upstaging Constant Puyo and Robert Demachy, the major figures of the Photo-Club de Paris. By the turn of the century, 39 of Dubreuil's works were featured in Annuaire General et International de la Photographie, and German critic Fritz Loescher praised Dubreuil in Photographische Mitteilungen. Few of Dubreuil's works from that period survived; they may have been destroyed by the photographer himself, or destroyed in bombings during the Second World War.

In 1903 Dubreuil was admitted as a member to the Linked Ring Brotherhood in London. That put Dubreuil among the ranks of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, F. Holland Day, Frederick H. Evans, and Gertrude Käsebier. In 1904 he began using the bromoil process, which he favored until 1930. This versatile process gave Dubreuil the freedom to control contrast and darken and lighten portions of prints at will. Dubreuil took that new printing process to Paris, where he was influenced by Cubism and Futurism; he became one of the first photographers to explore Modernism in the medium, preceding Alvin Langdon Coburn's "The Octopus" and the Modernist works of Paul Strand.

In 1910 Dubreuil sent Alfred Stieglitz twelve prints to be considered for Camera Work. Though none were published, six of the prints were exhibited alongside works of other Pictorialists at the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Gallery in Buffalo, New York. In 1912 Dubreuil again implored Stieglitz, sending him five exceptional prints, including "Notre Dame de Paris", "Eléphantaisie", "Grand Place Brussels", "Mightiness", and "Cascade, Place de la Concorde." In the same year, Dubreuil exhibited his first one-man show, of 64 prints, at the Little Gallery of the Amateur Photographer Magazine in London.

The First World War disrupted Dubreuil's career, family, and ties to Lille. By 1923, when Dubreuil re-emerged into the photo world, the Golden Age of Pictorialism was over. In 1924 Dubreuil moved to Brussels, Belgium, where he incorporated new influences into his work: Belgian surrealism, James Ensor, and the De Stijl movement in Holland. In Belgium, elements of fantasy and dreams, abstract design, and deceptions based on scale permeated Dubreuil's later work. Though Dubreuil's work, like the work of many of the Late Pictorialists, was at times derided, his originality and adventurous work led to his election as a member of the London Salon, the most highly regarded artistic photographic society at the time.

By 1935, Dubreuil had attained such stature that the Royal Photographic Society in London sponsored a retrospective exhibition of some 150 works by the then 63-year-old photographer. After 1935, though producing no new work, Dubreuil remained active in the photographic world as president of the Association Belge de Photographie et Cinematographie.

In 1937 Dubreuil's health began to decline, and he produced little new work. Tragically, in 1943 he sold his negatives and archives to the Gevaert firm in Belgium, which were destroyed in bombings during the war. Following his wife's death that same year, Pierre Dubreuil died in obscurity in Grenoble, France, on January 9, 1944.

Achievements

• Pierre Dubreuil was highly famous for his photographs "Aviator", "Elephantasy", "Tomorow is Mystery", and "Optical Shadows."

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Cucumbers (Concombres)

  • Behind the Scenes

  • Self-portrait of Dubreuil

  • Lines Meeting

  • Ferris Wheel in the Tuileries

  • Aviator

  • Frozen Fountain

  • Elephantasy

  • Ombres d'Optique

  • The First Round

  • Opera, Rainy Day

  • Interpretation of Picasso, The Railway

  • Tomorow is Mystery

Views

From the 1910s, Pierre evolved toward a more symbolist and audacious manner, a style that evoked that of the avant-garde with its conceptual and surrealist still-lives that had nonetheless preserved the elegant technique of his pictorialist production.

Quotations: "Chance is the enemy of the photographer."

"Every work should be the expression of an idea [...] This must never be left to chance... I plan almost all of my works beforehand."

"Why should the inspiration that exudes from an artist's manipulation of the hairs of a brush be any different from that of the artist who bends at will the rays of light?"

"In photography, a much greater importance should be given to the intellectual aspect of the work. Indeed, it should become the main artistic factor. Isn't it the intellectual work that is responsible for creating the feelings we experience in the presence of a masterpiece? Isn't it thanks to this that an intense communion between author and viewer can be achieved?"

Membership

In 1891 Pierre Dubreuil became a member of the Lille Photographic Society. In 1903 Dubreuil was admitted as a member to the Linked Ring Brotherhood in London.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Some say he is a fanatic, an eccentric; others insist that he is one of the rare photographers who have ideas that will last. Such a contradiction should not surprise us; it has always been associated with those whose names have become famous in literature and the arts... Yes, Pierre Dubreuil is the subject of violent discussions in our country. He knows this better than anyone; it does not discourage him... Let time do her work... Where necessary time honors those stars that are too modest or unknown and drowns the glorious, arrogant ephemera in shadow and oblivion." - Cyrille Ménard
  
  "What makes his pictures so outstanding can be summed up in a few words... Dubreuil's pictures are 'seen', seen through the eyes of an artist." - Fritz Loescher
  
  "To the present-day photographer, the name of Pierre Dubreuil stands for one of the extremists of photography... he is one of the three to whose influence and example the development of the 'New Photography' is to be traced, the others being Malcolm Arbutnot in England and Paul Strand in America.

Interests

• Artists

  Henry Peach Robinson

Connections

It is known that Pierre Dubreuil was married. Unfortunately, there is no information about his children. His wife died in 1943.

Friend:

Louis-Jean Delton

Friend:

Robert Pauli

References

• Pierre Dubreuil: Photographs 1896-1935
  1989
• Pierre Dubreuil