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Slide  Prodigal Son  Forain      MMA

Jean Louis Forain was one of the peaks of graphic art that came in the extraordinarily fruitful 19th century. He was born in 1853 & made his first etchings when he was about 21. Paris boulevards, theatres & night life were the subjects. There were 28 plates between 1873 & 1886 They were interesting & without being outstandingly individual there were promises of the later development.

The etching was interrupted by a long period of lithography, [much in the way Gavarni & Daumier had worked for publication.] In 1908 Forain returned to etching & made over 90 plates between 1908 & 1910 alone.

In the long interval Forain's interest in people had broadened & deepened. The former interest in the picturesque side of city life had matured into the incisive statements of human difficulties that we see in the plates of the Courts of Law, or in the Bible subjects. Forain also had a light touch & a sense of social satire that was as penetrating as it was terse.

This is the 3rd state of the 4th etching of The Prodigal Son. The designs are markedly different & this one is most complete in its poignance & understatement. [Anne Goldthwaite had much the same spontaneous & vivid delineation in her etchings & lithographs & I asked her once how she made a plate, if she didn't damage a number in the attempt. She replied that she often drew a subject on paper ten or more times until she felt that the next time would say it; then she went to the plate or stone.

Forain must have had very much the same way.] A curious thing about him is that he never succeeded in developing a plate to a more complex statement; as he added, he only cluttered.