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Jean-Emile Laboureur, Lassitude, 1912, woodcut, signed and numbered (24/35) in pencil. Reference: Sylvain Laboureur 682, third state (of 3). From the edition of about 35, published by Frequet, in very good condition, with wide margins, deckle edges right and bottom, a pinhole left and right margins, 9 1/2 x 10 1/8, the sheet 12 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches.
A fine impression of one of Laboureur’s most famous images; the colors fresh.
Although Laboureur’s own notes indicated that there were three states of this print (a few proofs in early states) his later notes for an exhibition of his work (in 1917, at Galerie Jove in Paris) indicated that there was only one state.
For the catalogue of the Laboureur Centenary Tribute exhibit in 1977 (at the French Institute/Alliance Francaise; the Chrysler Museum and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts) Robert Allen wrote, of Laboureur’s woodcuts: The most extraordinary of these is Lassitude, in which the head, outlined in black and colored in pink, gray, and yellow, is a bold, close-up portrait of a lady clearly under the influence of opium. Her dreamy condition is emphasized by the weird out-of-focus treatment of her eyes, the flat, gray sockets of which are hatched in parallel blacks and seem to be superimposed, like tinted glasses, an inch or two beyond the actual plane of her face.
