Jean-Louis Forain's 1890 lithograph, "Au restaurant," shows the clash of social classes in a Paris resaurant. According to curator Elise K. Kenney '55, the artist often "concentrated on the human interest of his figures--the hardships imposed by their social situation or some uncontrollable circumstance that victimized them."
Jean-Louis Forain isn't as famous today as his fellow artist Honoré Daumier, but Forain's biting characterizations of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French life are similarly fascinating. A selection of Forain's works of art on paper, drawn from the Art Museum's permanent collection, is on display through December 15.
The work of the French painter, lithographer, and caricaturist was strongly influenced by his compatriots Manet, Degas, and Daumier. Guest curator Elise K. Kenney '55 writes, "This exhibition presents images selected from those themes which most concerned Forain: ballet dancers, backstage with predatory, well-born male theatergoers; the life and milieu of the artist; portraits of friends; lives made more wretched by judicial process; and religious vignettes that reveal his own inner struggles."
In conjunction with the exhibition, two gallery talks will be given on Forain's work, on October 25 and November 1 (the appropriate CSJ calendar will list details).
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