Dec 16, 2009 - Sale 2200

Sale 2200 - Lot 127

Price Realized: $ 1,440
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
PAUL BALLURIAU (1860-1917) LE JOURNAL / LA TOURNÉE DES GRANDS-DUCS. Circa 1899.
44x61 inches, 114x155 cm. P. Dupont, Paris.
Condition B+: restored losses, repaired tears, creases and restoration in margins and image; horizontal folds.
Le Journal was a popular daily newspaper that specialized in serializing realistic novels about the Parisian demimonde. Balluriau was primarily a book and magazine illustrator who was a friend of Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen. For this story about a Grand Duke's tour, Balluriau shows the man himself, with his well-attired cocotte. Illuminated by a circle of light emanating from a hand-held lantern, they are making their way through the Montmartre night, surrounded by the indigent and lower working classes. That they are dramatically out of place in the neighborhood is made forebodingly clear by Balluriau's illustration. The theme of such an intersection of classes always made for popular reading.