Iconic French Photography from Roger Therond's Collection to Auction

Christie’s will present more than 350 photographs from the Roger Therond Collection across three sales taking place in Paris on November 13 and 14, and online November 6-17. 

Roger Therond was among the photography collectors who were instrumental in sparking a renewed interest in photography. A journalist and editor of Paris Match for half a century, Roger Therond assembled a collection of masterpieces of 19th and 20th century French photography. His earliest acquisitions focused on photographs from the origins of the medium, from Egypt and Nubia in the 1850s through the Orient of Félix Teynard, to the vanished Paris of Eugène Atget and the unexplored mountains captured by the Bisson Brothers, before the seascapes of Gustave Le Gray. 

Later, this expanded to encompass the experimental achievements of the 20th century, from Man Ray and Dora Maar to Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton, and Guy Bourdin, photographers who were friends of the collector.

Highlights include:

• Gustave Le Gray's Marine, Bateau quittant le port (€500,000-€700,000), Le Port du Havre, 1856 (€300,000-€400,000), Ciel chargé, mer Méditerranée, 1857 (€80,000-€100,000), and Pont du Carrousel, vu du pont des Arts, Paris, 1856-1858 (€80,000-€120,000).
• 50 albumen prints produced in 1867 and 1868 and mounted on card, recounting a Voyage in Upper Egypt undertaken for the sons of Ismaïl Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt, inscribed in ink by Le Gray's own hand (estimate: €800,000-€1.2m)
• the personal album of Félix Teynard, comprising 160 photographic plates from his celebrated Égypte et Nubie (1858), published by H. Fonteny in Paris and bequeathed to his son, Sixte, accompanied by a handwritten note requesting that the work be bound in two volumes (€300,000-€500,000)
• a gallery of portraits by Man Ray featuring Kiki de Montparnasse (1924, €80,000-€100,000), Peggy Guggenheim in a dress (1924-25, €30,000-€50,000), Max Ernst (circa 1935, €25,000-€35,000), and Marcel Duchamp playing chess, inscribed in the artist’s hand (1925, €30,000-€50,000)