DUMAS (Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, known as Dumas père - Lot 103

DUMAS (Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, known as Dumas père). Photograph (sepia silver print) taken by Alphonse Liébert in Paris. Inscribed on the back: A. Dumas père and Miss Menken. Dimensions: 6.5 cm x 10.4 cm. On the back: A. Liebert American Photography, 13 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, at the corner of Rue de la Paix, No. 184. [March 1867]. VERY RARE. The photograph depicts Alexandre Dumas, Sr., and Miss Adah Isaacs Menken standing in front of a painted canvas. The writer is dressed in street clothes, and the actress, wearing a leotard, tights, and slippers, is partially wrapped in a blanket. She stands to Dumas’s right, and their heads are tilted toward one another as they look into the camera. At Alexandre Dumas’s request, Alphonse Liébert had taken a series of photographs depicting him with Miss Menken. The photographer, taking advantage of Dumas’s absence while he was in Frankfurt, obtained permission from the Ministry of the Interior to sell his photographs, and high society in Paris made a big fuss over them. Alexandre Dumas, Jr., bought back as many prints as possible in order to destroy them and persuaded his father to sue the photographer.A poet, writer, and actress born in the United States, Ada Menken (1835–1868) began her career in her native country, then in England and France, where she arrived in 1866. She died in the summer of 1868, at the age of 33, from peritonitis.