L'Enfant Blessé
Jean-Emile Laboureur (1877-1943), L’Enfant Blessé, engraving, 1916, signed in pencil lower left and numbered (4/25) twice lower right. Reference: Laboureur 142, second state (of 2). From the edition of 25, the total printing was 32. In very good condition apart from some soft folds toward the left; printed on a cream laid paper with margins, 4 x 3 3/4, the sheet 5 x 4 1/4 inches, archival matting.
A fine impression of this exquisitely detailed rendering.
This composition is a marvelous example of Laboureur’s adaptation of the Cubist idiom to his own work. In particular, Laboureur capitalizes on the capacity of the engraving burin to create nearly microscopic regularized sharp lines and patterns which compliment the modernist, cubist approach.
This World War I subject is a walking couple: a woman and a man – a soldier – cradling a bandaged child.