Louis Icart —Homenaz's Pears: Bishop's Generosity Harlequin, Clown, Feast 1936
$ 49.9
Description
Louis Icart —Homenaz's Pears: Bishop's Generosity Harlequin, Clown, Feast 1936. The harlequin attends. The clown watches from the right. The pig's head on the centerpiece has opinions. Publisher: Le Vasseur et Cie, ParisYear: 1936. Le Vasseur's 1936 edition is the definitive illustrated Rabelais of the Art Deco period — a luxury bibliophile production printed by Draeger Frères in color heliogravure using multiple etched copper plates. Louis Icart — Original Color Heliogravure, Gargantua et Pantagruel (Le Vasseur Edition, 1936) At the end of the feast, Homenaz delivers his promised pears — a nude figure emerging from a giant's hand bearing a tray of fruit, her headdress echoing their shape, the table below still laden with the full inventory of a Rabelaisian banquet. The harlequin attends. The clown watches from the right. The pig's head on the centerpiece has opinions. "En fin de table, Homenaz nous donna grand nombre de grosses et belles poyres." --Rabelais--"At the end of the table, Homenaz gave us a great number of large and beautiful pears." Rabelais considered this a satisfactory conclusion to dinner. Artist: Louis Icart (1888–1950) Medium: Multiple etched copper plates. Original color heliogravure (photogravure), Printer: Draeger Frères, Paris Publisher: Le Vasseur et Cie, ParisYear: 1936 Paper: Vélin d'Arches Plate mark (cuvette) is visible and lovely, the visble physical artifact of an intaglio copper plate pressed into heavy paper. Sheet size: approximately 9.5 × 7.25 inches, full margins as issued From # 446 of 900 Limited Edition Sets. Photos of the colophon and "Justification du Tirage" are for informational purpose only and are not part of the sale. Le Vasseur's 1936 edition is the definitive illustrated Rabelais of the Art Deco period — a luxury bibliophile production printed by Draeger Frères in color heliogravure using multiple etched copper plates. Louis Icart built his reputation on elegant, sensual depictions of Parisian women — polished, fashionable, and largely decorative. The 1936 Rabelais commission placed him in entirely different territory: broad physical humor and the full carnival spirit of a text that has been transgressing decorum since 1532. The result is unmistakably Icart in line and color, but working in a register — grotesque, comic, uninhibited — that his commercial output rarely required of him. Ships flat, protected in rigid mailer with archival sleeve and stiffeners.
