Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning
02 works, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, with Footnotes. #113
Dorothea Tanning, c. 1942
Gelatin silver print
7/8 x 7 5/8 in. (25 x 19.3 cm.)
Private collection
Dorothea Margaret Tanning, American painter and writer (born Aug. 25, 1910, Galesburg, Ill. — died Jan. 31, 2012, New York, N.Y.), was a prominent Surrealist, but her artistic career was overshadowed by that of her famous husband, German painter and sculptor Max Ernst, to whom she was married for 30 years (1946–76); her own dreamlike imagery, however, was considered more Gothic in nature than surreal. Tanning moved to New York City in 1936, where she established and made her living as a fashion illustrator. At a party in 1942, she met Ernst (then married to his third wife, art patron Peggy Guggenheim), and the two moved in together about a week after Ernst viewed her work and persuaded his wife to include Tanning’s self-portrait, Birthday (1942), in which she appears clothed but bare breasted and shoeless (Below). In 1944 Tanning was given her first solo show. After Tanning and Ernst married in 1946, the couple moved to Sedona, Ariz…