About This Collection

Barrault, born in France in 1910, was an esteemed and innovative fixture in French theatre and film for five decades from the 1930s to 1980s. He trained as a mime and an actor, and later directed both screen and stage productions. With Madeleine Renaud, his wife, he founded a theatrical company in Paris in 1947, after acting and directing with the Comédie Française. Barrault later directed the Théâtre d'Orsay and the Théâtre des Nations. The collection contains over 400 photographs documenting Barrault and Renaud's career in the theatre in France between 1947 and 1979. Most images are production stills of performances at the Théâtre d'Orsay, Théâtre de France Odéon, and other venues, but the collection also includes images of Barrault and his contemporaries off-stage. Madeleine Renaud is, after himself, the most frequently photographed. Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet are among the notable theatrical figures documented.