?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
FRANCISQUE POULBOT (1879-1946) LE JOURNAL / AUX BAT. D'AF. After 1910. 63 x 93 inches. Printed by Pichot, Paris. B+ restoration in margins and image. Two sheets. Poulbot was a self-taught artist who became a disciple of Theofile-Alexandre Steinlen. He spent his career in Montmartre and became so famous for his magazine, book and poster depictions of street urchins, that even today they are referred to as petits poulbots. Practically the only time that his "signature" children do not appear in his work is in his posters for Le Journal. Three of these works are images based on novels by Aristide Bruant, the, by then, aging café-concert star who was reusing the characters he had invented earlier in his career to help him earn a little money. If the novels themselves were lackluster, they inspired Poulbot to create his best works. This large format provides him an enormous canvas on which to wield his formidable artistic talents. The beautiful, vivid poster depicts a crowd with a brilliant sense of movement and exudes the cheap melodrama that was clearly at the heart of this production. It illustrates the most recent enrollees into Les Bats d'Af [Bataillons d'Afrique]. This was a disciplinary regiment of the French Army, formed of convicts and criminals, that was sent to the most hostile parts of South Africa during the French Colonial era. Here as they march off to Africa they are accompanied by their friends and family. Poulbot 81.
