Steinlen, Head of a Man

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SIXTY ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY PRINT MAKERS
(American, British and Continental, 19th-20th Century)

4. Théophile Alexandre Steinlen
(1859-1923)
Head of a Man

(click on image to print)

Head of a Man

Greyish lithographic crayon on laid paper, signed with the estate stamp (variant of Lugt 2341b), 175 x 114 mm. Although the drawing appears to have been made with lithographic crayon, it is not on transfer paper and was not likely to have been made for transfer to a lithographic stone. More likely, the artist simply grabbed the implement closest to hand to make this rapid but telling sketch. We have no idea who the subject is, but that there is a man there, a personality, there is no doubt. Steinlen was a wonderful graphic artist, his prints, apart from the posters, still enormously undervalued, and his drawings, apart from the cats, still woefully under-collected. This is likely a drawing from his later years, after he had gone through and documented in drawings the horrors of a world war. It has simplicity and directness and perhaps a feeling of resignation, as much in the hand of the artist as in the face of the subject.

$525.00