André Breton, the poet and founder of French surrealism, played a key role in the avant-garde embrace of Morris Hirshfield’s works. Breton celebrated “Nude at the Window (Hot Night in July)” in the pages of the American art and literary magazine View and included Hirshfield in First Papers of Surrealism in 1942. After the war, Breton and other surrealists continued to promote Hirshfield’s work in Europe, where he received more attention than in the United States. The Surrealists approached the artist not as an amateur outsider or novelty act, but as a fellow traveler whose work stood on its own as a creative achievement. In the fall 1942, a series of photographs were taken in Peggy Guggenheim’s townhouse by the fashion and portrait photographer Hermann Landshoff. The shoot featured the surrealist painter Max Ernst, Guggenheim’s husband at the time, as well as Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Leonora Carrington. In the first photograph, Ernst, Duchamp, and Breton stand behind Hirshfield’s Nude at the Window (Hot Night in July) and look down at it as though transfixed. In the second photograph, a Museum guest gazes at the painting on view in our current exhibition, Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered. Images: Hermann Landshoff (1905, Munich, Germany–1986, New York, NY), André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst [standing behind Morris Hirshfield’s Nude at the Window (Hot Night in July)], and Leonora Carrington (seated) at Peggy Guggenheim’s townhouse Fall 1942 New York, NY. Digital print (original: gelatin silver print, 60 x 60 in.) © bpk. Digital image: bpk-Bildagentur/Münchner Stadtmuseum/Hermann Landshoff/Art Resource, New York. Photo by Eva Cruz/EveryStory.