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Slide Les Lorettes Gavarni

This plate from Les Lorettes, the Gay Women, a series made about 1840, is more typical of Gavarni, his rich black & subtle varieties in the greys, his delight in elegance & a sympathy with its emotions, in contrast to Daumier's acid amusement at its pretensions. Altogether Gavarni thoroughly enjoyed being a man of the world & it naturally tempered his technic as well as his viewpoint. While Gavarni has more of the kindliness of Chardin, his milieu is by no means so positive in its virtues nor so profound in its implications.

As for himself, he was one of the most prolific & sensitively skillful artists of his century; an ardent pursuer of women; an elegant who lived in financial extravagance & difficulty. He said he had loved his father & mother & his children. It is true the death of his youngest child was an unconsolable grief which aggravated a misanthropic decline. Physically & mentally burned out he died at 62.