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Overview
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 etching is a return to Forain's familiar court-room milieu, and depicts the credibility gap between a mother, holding her two small children, turning towards two men above her, who are in turn looking down at her. One clearly wears a lawyer's cap. Are these both legal scoundrels attempting to manipulate her as a witness, hence the title 'témoins'? What have she and the children evidently witnessed? Certainly in her attitude of maternal affection, the mother appears more virtuous than them. The influence of Daumier and his savage targetting of corrupt lawyers is very evident here. In an earlier, trial proof, Forain completely detached the two groups; here, tantalisingly, he links them, no doubt to encourage the viewer to construct a possible narrative.
See: Wikipedia, 'Jean-Louis Forain', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Forain
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art April 2018