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Large b&w photo-portrait of Hugo, matted in dark green with two gilt borders within, a gilt and black wood box frame (81 x 67 cm.). The photograph signed and dated by the subject in white on the image, this surrounded by onlaid personal objects on red velvet, thus: 2 lucky charms of agate, an unusual bead, 2 long earrings in gold metal with semi-precious stones, a shark's tooth, a carved object, a travel chess set with box and pieces inside and placed around with the box lid with a laid in signed and inscribed note of provenance, opera glasses and a die sculpture on a base. N.p. [Paris], n.d. £5,000.00 Small cracks in glazing, frame corners bumped. Provenance: Valentine Hugo, from her apartment on Paris's Rue de Sontay to Ancienne collection Jean Petithory (the chess set at least), lot 103, the catalogue cover image for Collection Pierre Spi- vakoff: l'Univers de Valentine Hugo et a? divers amateurs. The full holograph inscription in an attractive French hand within the chess lid, in dark ink, reads: 'l'E?chec de voyage de Valentine HUGO. Ancienne Collection J. PETITHORY. Nouvel le Collection P. SPIVAKOFF. Jean Petithory'. A great origin story, from the source herself to Petithory the important publisher-gallerist-book- seller who, among other things, issued the series of ?Mains-Libres' avant-garde books that resurrected Man Ray's photos of resurrected mannequins in 1966. A beautiful photograph of the then 62 year old Hugo with a neck so long and elegant that it is prac- tically pre-Raphaelite, she was described by Cocteau in her youth as the 'Swan of Boulogne' . Here surrounded by magical and oneiric personal objects ? just like her prints and paintings. A portrait that, to this cataloguer at least, resembles solarised profiles of Andre? Breton made by Man Ray in 1930, but perhaps one combined with a similar sort of version of a ?Poem Object' done by Breton from the same period. Indeed, Mary Anne Caws has suggested that, after an intense, obsessive love affair with Breton, Hugo became an orthodox surrealist and that: 'All of Valentine's graphic works and paintings after 1931 bear witness to the obsessive presence of Andre? Breton and her association with the surrealists' (p-199 Jean-Marie Cauvin ? Valentine, Andre?, Paul et les Autres, The Surrealisation of Valentine Hugo in Mary Anne Caws et al ? Surrealism and Women, 1991). The opera glasses were no doubt a familiar object to Hugo, her father was a composer, she knew Satie and Cocteau and her numerous sketches of Stravinsky productions are held in the V&A's the- atre collection. They might be seen symbolically as a means to look at dreams, the Unconscious, the spirit world and the past. The charming little chess set is firmly grounded in Surrealism's history from Breton to Duchamp and beyond. Commentators have suggested that games were often the only Surrealist activities that women were given equal status in by male artists. Other commentators have suggested that games represented the struggle of seduction and sex. The two golden jewels, though possibly ?costume' , evoke Hugo's affluence and style in her youth and of course her former brother-in-law, the goldsmith Franc?ois Hugo worked with Picasso and others to produce bijoux and sculptures. They are echoed by two similar ones that she wears in the photograph as pendants. The die reminds this cataloguer of Hugo's 1931 assemblage ?Object of Symbolic Function' with a gloved hand holding a gloved hand holding a similar, though white, six sided die that was published in ?La Re?volution Surrealiste' 3. 243828 (THIS IS A VERY LARGE AND FRAGILE ITEM AND WILL NEED SPECIALIST SHIPPING WHICH WILL INCUR EXTRA COSTS TO THOSE QUOTED).
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