Cortland Street, New York, 1908
Jean-Emile Laboureur (1877-1943), Cortlandt Street, New York, 1908, etching, signed in pencil lower left, also inscribed “Premier Etat (2 epreuves)” lower left. Reference: Sylvain Laboureur 75, first state (of 2). In very good condition, printed in black ink on laid paper, with margins, 10 1/8 x 5 1/2, the sheet 11 3/4 x 6 3/4 inches, archival matting.
A fine impression of one of the two proofs in the first state; a small edition of 25 lifetime impressions was published in the second state.
Only a tiny change was made to the plate for the second state impressions: a few lines of drypoint were added to the shirt of the boy in the foreground.
A few impressions (8) were made of this plate on the occasion of the 1989 publication of the catalogue raisonne of Laboureur’s prints; then the plate was cancelled.
Jean-Emile Laboureur, born in Nantes in 1877, traveled to Paris in 1895 intending to study law at the Sorbonne, but found himself drawn to the nearby famed Academie Julian, and became immersed in the Parisian art scene. In 1886 he met Toulouse Lautrec, who influenced Laboureur’s emerging aesthetic style, as did the work of Odilon Redon, Bonnard, and Felix Vallotton. Laboureur traveled widely as a young artist, staying for periods in the US (where he created Cortlandt Street, New York), and studying classic art and printmaking in Italy and Germany, before returning to Paris in 1910.
Although some of Cortlandt Street was bulldozed to make space for the World Trade Center, much of the street remains today a thriving and busy downtown New York thoroughfare, just as portrayed by Laboueur a century ago.