Le Prévenu et l'Enfant (The accused and the child)

Jean-Louis Forain (1852-1931) was a leading French painter, printmaker and illustrator of the 19th and 20th centuries. He exhibited with the Impressionists at the invitation of his mentor and close friend, Edgar Degas, in the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th exhibitions (1879-1886). His ballet scenes show his awareness of Degas, while his courtroom scenes, exposing the cruelties of the legal system, owe much in their concept to Honoré Daumier. In turn, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec looked up to Forain. His illustrations particularly to books by his friend the notorious symbolist/decadent J.K. Huysmans brought considerable acclaim, while his bitingly witty cartoons for Le Figaro and Le Courrier Francais made him a household name. Additionally, his portrait lithographs of Auguste Renoir and Ambroise Vollard are described in his Grove Art Online entry as ‘brilliant’. The same source notes how ‘he resumed etching in 1902 but changed his subject matter to concentrate on religious and courtroom subjects of great drama and deep feeling, expressed with bravura technique’

This is one of them, and it contrasts graphically with Forain's early etchings (e.g. The two fops, Te Papa 1971-0012-7), which were straightforward representations of drinkers, stage-door Johnnies, street walkers and the usual Montmartre cast. In the later prints, a rapid etched line produced tangles, crossings and zig-zags out of which the figures, the setting and the depth almost miraculously emerged. In subject, he turned to the courtroom and its victims, as here, and to religious subjects. Forain's legal scenes are never funny, in the way that Daumier's could be, but they are more acerbic. This print has particular psychological depth and contrasts graphically with the powerful The lawyer speaks to the accused (Te Papa 1958-0003-2). For once the lawyer appears human; downcast, he sits beside the standing mother and toddler who appears to be desperately addressing the accused, presumably her husband, in the dock above. Is the lawyer disconsolate because the case for the defence has collapsed and feels for the mother and child? Forain leaves it to you, the viewer, to interpet the likely human tragedy of the storyline.

See:

C & J Goodfriend, http://www.drawingsandprints.com/CurrentExhibition/detail.cfm?ExhibitionID=16&Exhibition=41

Wikipedia, 'Jean-Louis Forain', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Forain

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   April 2018