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Le Bonheur du Jour

Creator: George Barbier
Offered by: Shapero Gallery

Description
BARBIER, George
Le Bonheur du Jour ou les Graces à la Mode, texte et dessins par George Barbier.
Paris, Chez Meyniel, 1924.
Group of six lithographs, hand-coloured in pochoir by Henri Reidel after Barbier, some with fully coloured backgrounds. Framed and glazed, 52 by 38.5cm.

The sixteen plates of Le Bonheur du Jour are amongst the largest and most carefully meditated of Barbier’s designs. So ambitious was this album that it took him from 1920 to 1924 to complete it to his satisfaction. A study of manners and fashion, it was designed to appeal both to those who like to link the present to the past, and to observers of the current scene.

Barbier begins his introduction with a summary of fashion illustration from the XVI century onwards, finding a specific predecessor for his own work in that of Horace Vernet’s record of First Empire costume, Incroyables et merveilleuses, published around a hundred years earlier. Barbier saw similarities between the period after the Napoleonic Wars and his own post-Great War era, with dandies and their ladies free at last to enjoy frivolities and sensuality.

More Information

Documentation:	Ample Provenance
Origin:	France
Period:	1920-1949
Materials:	hand-coloured en pochoir on paper
Condition:	Good.
Creation Date:	1924
Styles / Movements:	Illustration
Dealer Reference #:	102802
Incollect Reference #:	459708

Dimensions

W.	20.47 in;	H.	15.16 in;	D.	0.79 in;
W.	52 cm;	H.	38.5 cm;	D.	2 cm;

Message from Seller:

Based in the heart of Mayfair in London, we specialise in prints and original works on paper across a broad range of subjects, from antique prints to modern pochoir plates, as well as photographs from vintage photography to modern art photography.