Sortie de Theatre a Londres
Jean-Emile Laboureur (1877-1943), Sortie de Theatre a Londres, etching and drypoint, 1911, signed in pencil lower left [also signed and dated in the plate upper right]. Reference: Laboureur 104, third state (of 3). Published for La Societe des amis de l’eau-forte, with the blindstamp with the inscription: Circle Librairie Estampes. From an edition in the third state of 109; there were also 5 impressions of the first state and five of the second state. In excellent condition, the full sheet with deckle edges bottom and sides, 6 3/4 x 14; a remarque lower left 2 x 3 1/2, the sheet 12 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches.
Provenance: unknown collector’s mark verso (GOE in oval)
A fine rich impression, printed in dark brown ink on cream laid paper with the Arches watermark.
The small remarque lower left is actually another print printed on a separate plate; it shows a man running after a London horse-drawn trolley.
Although Sortie is dated 1911 Laboureur apparently drew the model for this etching much earlier, in 1909 or late 1908. In the autumn of 1908 he took up residence in London, occupying a space in Chelsea. One can discern a modernist approach entering his work here, and also perhaps some of the English penchant for satire and exaggeration, as exemplified in the work of Hogarth and Rowlandson – certainly the characters, especially the women leaving this theatre are, in Laboureur’s rendering, larger than life.