Jean-Emile Laboureur
'Le Tir Forain' (Fairground Shooting) — 1920s French Cubism
1920-21

Name: 'Le Tir Forain' (Fairground Shooting) — 1920s French Cubism
Brand: Jean-Emile Laboureur
Price: 6500 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Le Tir Forain, engraving, edition 108, 1920-21, Sylvain Laboureur 191. Signed and numbered '19/85 ép' in pencil. Initialed 'L' and dated 1920 in the matrix, upper right. A superb, richly-inked impression, in warm black ink, on Arches cream wove paper. The full sheet with margins (1 1/4 to 1 5/8 inches); two professionally repaired tears in the bottom right sheet corner, well away from the image, otherwise in excellent condition. Printed by the artist. Matted to museum standards, unframed. 'Le Tir Forain' is one of Laboureur’s most acclaimed engravings. André Dunoyer de Segonzac, the artist’s esteemed pupil, considered it Laboureur’s masterpiece. An impression of this work is in the McNay Art Museum. ABOUT THE ARTIST Born in Nantes in the summer of 1877, Emile Laboureur was the son of a prosperous bourgeois family. He went to Paris in 1895 to study law but found himself more often drawn to study at the famed art school Académie Julian, although he never officially enrolled there. Upon his introduction to the distinguished wood engraver Auguste Lepère, he decided to take up the formal study of printmaking. Lepère’s technical instruction in the craft of printmaking was essential for Laboureur’s artistic initiation but provided little in the way of stylistic inspiration. It was Toulouse-Lautrec, with whom Laboureur had become socially acquainted in 1896, who liberated his sense of humor and allowed him to recognize the potentialities for the visual expression of wit and irony. Laboureur assimilated his own orthodox wood engraving and etching techniques with the convivial, cosmopolitan subject matter of Lautrec’s color lithographs. Concurrently, his work took increasing cognizance of other contemporary innovations: the baleful hallucinations of Odilon Redon; the serpentine curves and wry social observations of Pierre Bonnard; and, most importantly, the incisive black and white compositions of Félix Vallotton, whose influence stayed with Laboureur’s graphic works for twenty years. By 1899, Laboureur had fulfilled his compulsory service with the military, which he despised, and was able to pursue his love of art full-time. Laboureur traveled extensively to study, work, and learn all there was about the history of engraving. He developed a vast knowledge and connoisseurship during his trips to Italy, Germany, and throughout Europe. Laboureur traveled to the United States in 1903—the country and its people appealed to him enormously. He was intrigued by the frenzy of the great industrial capitals, by the spectacle of skyscrapers, by the conspicuous consumption of the monied classes, and equally by the urban proletariat. Among the cities he visited were Albany, Boston, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh captured his imagination and he produced two successful series based on the city – 'Ten Etchings from Pittsburgh' (1905) and 'In The Pittsburgh Mills' (1906). He would lecture wherever he went, especially in New York, under the name Jean-Emile. Having stayed in London for a period, he finally settled in France for good by 1910. By that time analytical cubism had burst upon the art scene. Laboureur’s style, however, remained essentially unchanged for the next several years while he was digesting this new genre. By 1913, he began to invent a cubist vernacular that was distinctly his own, one that would rival Picasso, Villon, and Braque but one which was distinctly decorative rather than analytical. With the outbreak of World War I, Laboureur was again enlisted in the military. This disruption to his artistic life necessitated a change in mediums. No longer able to produce etchings due to the bulky paraphernalia required for acid baths, he began to engrave his plates (which he often salvaged from an ammunition depot) directly with a portable burin. In 1916, he produced thirty-one engravings, among which was a series of nine published as ‘Petites images de la guerre sur le front britannique’. Their subject matter eschews the horror of war to focus on the absurd and comic aspects of the tragedy which engulfed Europe. After the war, Laboureur turned increasingly to book illustration. He bought a house on the Breton coast and transformed himself from a bachelor bon-viveur into a country family man with two sons. He worked steadily during the 1920s, but due to the worldwide depression of the 1930s, his output began to lessen until 1939 when he was struck down by a disease that left him paralyzed and unable to work. His last two prints remain unfinished. He died in 1943. Edited from: Robert Allen, ‘Jean-Emile Laboureur: A Centenary Tribute,’ Alliance Française, New York, 1977.

Creator:

Jean-Emile Laboureur (1877-1943, French)

Creation Year:

1920-21

Dimensions:

Height: 10.5 in (26.67 cm)Width: 9.88 in (25.1 cm)

Medium:

Engraving

Movement & Style:

Cubist

Period:

1920-1929