About This Image

The book and print stands along the Seine were a popular venue for Paris intellectuals.

The 1963 catalog dedicated to Brassaï by the Bibliothèque Nationale France indicates that the photographer took this photograph without knowing it was Professor Louis Dimier. It was during an exhibition, 20 years later, that a woman recognized her father-in-law in the image. A similar print of similar dimensions by Brassaï is held in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Louis Dimier (February 11, 1865–November 21, 1943) was an important French art historian and royalist.

Born in Paris in 1865, Dimier was among the many early members of the Action Française who were practicing Catholics (along with Bernard de Vésins and Léon de Montesquiou). They helped Charles Maurras (1868-1952) develop the royalist league's pro-Catholic policies.

In 1915, during the First World War, Dimier published "Les troncons du serpent: idée d'une dislocation de l'empire allemnd at d'une reconstitution des Allemagnes" in which he advocated partitioning Germany into around 100 free cities and allocating German lands to Poland and Sweden, with the Rhineland and the Ruhr being a workers' state entrusted to trade unions.

See: Sichel, Brassai, Paris le Jour Paris la Nuit (1988), p.62, pl.103; Tucker, Brassai: The Eye of Paris, pl.115.

Provenance: François Lepage.

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