This is probably one of my favourite studio photographs.  I found it at a flea market in the small village of Nyon on Lake Geneva in Switzerland.  It was a bitterly cold morning and the sellers were keen to make any sales, presumably to just make it worth having left their houses that morning.

I spotted her on the ground, propped up against the legs of the table.  She was exquisite in profile and her hair was  perfectly late 1920s/early 1930s. The price was ridiculously cheap.

It was only after returning home and doing some research that I realised it was a lovely find indeed.  Lucien Lorelle (1894-1968) was one of the great French photographers of the early twentieth century, who founded his own studio in 1927 after a successful stint at the famous portraitist studio of GL Manual Freres.  Studio Lorelle quickly garnered an international reputation for its studio portraits, attracting a host of young photographers who would go on to make a name for themselves in their own right such as  Czech photographer Jaroslav Rössler, German photographer Erna Wagner-Hehmke and Rose Nadau.

Studio Lorelle also attracted a who’s who of famous and beautiful artists and film stars including:  Jean Cocteau, Tamara de Lempicka, Louise Brooks, Jean Murat, Käthe von Nagy, Marie Glory and Brigitte Helm.

Studio Lorelle was sold in 1935 and Lorelle went on to found another studio – Studio Lucien Lorelle.  Given my photograph has the original Studio Lorelle label, it is reasonable to say that it dates between 1927-1935.