Jacques Henri Lartigue was a keen sportsman intrigued by sport’s rise as a popular pastime for the middle classes in the early twentieth century. Lartigue’s unposed and candid images capture both the delightful exuberance of amateur sports––racing, skiing, tennis, gymnastics, and hang gliding––and the unique character of their success the first half of the twentieth century.
Lartigue is a master at capturing the dynamism of the human body at play––the strange shapes it can contort into and the movements that can articulate everything from easy nonchalance to fierce concentration.
Jacques Henri Lartigue was a French photographer and painter best known for his portraits of France’s middle and upper classes at leisure. Since the age of seven, Lartigue, who had been a photographer, rose to prominence for his photo albums, which provide a detailed chronicle of the twentieth century in France and abroad, as well as his official portraits.
