René Le Bègue was a French pictorialist photographer (1857-18914), best known for his nudes. He was active in photography circles in Paris during the last two decades of the 19th century and into the 20th century. In 1988 he became a founding member of the Photo-Club de Paris, and in 1894 Le Bègue was invited to join the Linked Ring Brotherhood, an organization based in London that was pivotal in establishing pictorial photography as an international aesthetic movement.
Beginning in 1894, Le Bègue exhibited regularly with the Photo Club de Paris. After the turn of the century, his photographs were reproduced in Alfred Stieglitz’s important journal Camera Work. The gum bichromate process used to make this photograph allowed Le Bègue to choose the striking orange-red pigment and to manipulate the print-partly by hand-so that it resembled a chalk drawing. Although it appears to be an unfinished study, it is, in fact, the final work and was likely intended to demonstrate the broad capabilities and self-consciously artistic possibilities of photography.
