Portrait of Yves Tanguy, Paris

In this photograph, Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy peers mischievously over the rim of his wineglass, a young man enjoying the Parisian café society of the 1920s. Below the image, Tanguy has written a greeting to gallerist Julien Levy and his wife, Muriel, toasting to their good health. In the 1930s, Levy was the first to show Surrealism in the United States, and his New York gallery later became a center for European artists displaced by the Second World War. Though this picture was taken when Tanguy was a young man, he likely sent it to the Levys sometime during their marriage (1944 to the late 1950s).