Lartigue, Jacques-Henri (-Charles-Auguste)

(born June 13, 1894, Courbevoie, Fr.—died Sept. 12, 1986, Nice) French painter and photographer. Born into a prosperous family, he was given a Brownie camera at age seven. From the beginning, his photographs were invariably informal shots of everyday subjects. In the 1910s and '20s Lartigue enthusiastically photographed subjects such as automobile races, fashionable ladies at the seashore and the park, and kite flying. These photographs reveal his free spirit and love of life, rather than a concern for photographic technique and craft, and often capture a sense of movement. When his work was discovered in the 1960s, it was acclaimed for its departure from formal, posed portraits and for its ingenuous charm and beguiling spontaneity.

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