MK Gallery opens new art exhibition celebrating works of photographer and painter Jacques Henri Lartigue

A major new exhibition has opened at Milton Keynes Gallery dedicated to the rarely seen colour photographs by pioneering 20th-century French photographer and painter Jacques Henri Lartigue.

The exhibition opened earlier this week and will run through to 4 October, with the exhibition showcasing the works of a figure who was at the centre of France’s golden era of creativity, moving within a social circle that included cultural icons such as Jean Cocteau, Grace Kelly and Pablo Picasso.

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894–1986) is best known for his black-and-white photographs capturing the elegance and joie de vivre of high society and modern life, particularly during the early 20th-century Parisian Belle Époque, although he did not receive widespread critical acclaim until later in life.

Lartigue also became known for his interest in documenting the speed and movement of new innovations such as motor racing and aviation, and photographs of life on the French Riviera. He is regarded as a pioneer of the ‘spontaneous’ snapshot – a departure from the formal portraits that were typical of the time – which would later become known as street photography and popularised by Instagram.

Lartigue began experimenting with early colour photography as a teenager, at a time when the process was still technically demanding and rarely used. His colour photographs from this period show intimate portraits of his family, friends and everyday life. However, the long exposure times and cumbersome equipment led him to focus on painting throughout the 1930s, until the use of modern colour photography became more widespread in the 1950s.

Jacques Henri Lartigue: Life in Colour will explore Lartigue’s lifelong experimentation with colour. The exhibition will feature over 150 works, focusing on his lesser-known colour photographs. It will also include his early experimental stereoscopic images, which produce three-dimensional effects, as well as vintage prints, unique works on paper and archival documents.

The exhibition will showcase the breadth of Lartigue’s career, from drawings he made as a child in the 1900s to his work in the fashion world of the 1960s, and his abstract floral photographs of the 1970s. Until recently, the majority of Lartigue’s colour photographs had never been seen, despite representing a third of the 120,000 images in his archive, the Donation JH Lartigue.

Jacques Henri Lartigue: Life in Colour is organised in collaboration with the Association des Amis de Jacques Henri Lartigue, Ministère de la Culture, France and diChroma Photography.