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Social Sharing
Eléphantaisie
Not on view
On the eve of its 20th anniversary, the Eiffel Tower played a role in this iconic work by the modernist photographer Pierre Dubreuil, entitled �l�phantaisie. Dubreuil's atmospheric photograph focuses on Emmanuel Fr�miet's life-size bronze of a young elephant caught in a trap that stood on a pedestal before the Palais du Trocad�ro (it is now situated near the entrance to the Mus�e d'Orsay). Commissioned for the Exposition Universelle of 1878, Fr�miet's elephant represented the height of academic realism in the specialized genre of animal sculpture, showing the kind of exquisite detail that led Degas to dismiss the sculptor as pandering to bourgeois taste. Employing a telephoto lens to compress the intervening space, Dubreuil engages Fr�miet's and Eiffel's mismatched monuments in a stylistic clash of the titans. Dubreuil's bold juxtaposition shocked viewers when his �l�phantaisie was exhibited in London in 1910, and it continues to resonate a century after its creation.
- Photographer
- Pierre Dubreuil (French, 1872 - 1944)
- Title
- Eléphantaisie
- Date
- 1908
- Object Type
- Photographs
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- 9 3/4 x 7 11/16 in. (24.7 x 19.5 cm)
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase, Prints and Drawings Art Trust Fund
- Accession Number
- 2009.29