Grand Prix de l’AFC, Dieppe

Photograph by Jacques Henri Lartigue © Ministère de la Culture (France), MPP-AAJHL

Jacques-Henri Lartigue , French, 1894-1986

Title

Date1912

MediumPlatinum print

Dimensions

40 × 30 cm

Credit LinePurchased, 2021

Object numberNGI.2023.6

DescriptionIt's nearly impossible to think of Lartigue's photographs without this particular one coming to mind; it is often referred to simply as "the race car", making it a sort of Lartigue logo. The image embodies the characteristics inherent to Lartigue's work, such as movement, vitality, modernism and beauty. Lartigue loved everything about cars. their intriguing look, the accoutrements of the driver, the eventual flat tire. When his family travelled to Auvergne in 1905 to watch their first automobile race, the Gordon-Bennett Cup, young Jacques photographed the moving cars, made drawings of them and then made sketches of the photographs he had taken during the day. He was instantly captivated by car racing. The Grand Prix of 1912 was run on the circuit of Dieppe. and while No. 6 a Schneider driven by a M. Croquet, was a favourite, it was actually the Peugeot, with the ace driver Georges Boillot at the wheel, that won, at speeds reaching over one hundred miles an hour. Swinging his camera parallel to the road in a movement that followed the car, Lartigue barely managed to catch the speeding machine in his frame. Sweeping trees and spectators in its wake, the car rushes onward with the single-minded urgency of the new age.
ProvenanceMinistère de la Culture - France; Estate of Jacques Henri Lartigue; Claire by Kahn Galerie; Purchased, 2021