Les Amateurs d'Estampes (Print Collectors or Print Fanciers)

Artist Félix Vallotton French, (b. Switzerland), 1865 - 1925

Date1892

MediumWoodcut on wove paper

DimensionsSheet: 10 1/8 x 12 7/8 in. (25.7 x 32.7 cm)

ClassificationsPrints

Credit LineThe Sparling Family Collection

Object number2014.2.67

On View

Not on view

Collections

Works on Paper

SignedLower left, in print: "FV" in an outlined box

MarkingsUCtr outside the image area, an address stamp in purple ink: "ACTUELLEMENT/39 bis, Rue de Chateaudun". L Ctr outside image area: "Gravure originale sur bois par F. VALLOTTON"

DescriptionAn address card or, in this case, an address change card, for Edmond Sagot (1857 - 1917), a well-known Parisian print dealer who specialized in posters beginning in 1886. The image is of a crowd of men gathering. They are dressed in top hats and bowlers, mostly seen from the back, actively looking at a wall or gallery window in the background, apparently at a newly published poster or print. One gestures with an upraised hand and one figure is just striding into the scene, moving from the foreground into the crowd, his lower left leg cut off by the lower border.

The address cut into the block on the upper left of the image area is "18 rue Guénégaud." This was Sagot's location from 1885 to 1894. Another address, "ACTUELLEMENT [currently] /39 bis, Rue de Chateaudun" is stamped in purple/blue ink outside the block, center right where the upper border steps down. This was where Sagot moved in 1894. This print was an interim state before he had another cut with this new address in the upper left. A copy of that print is in the Bibliothèque Nationale (copy on file).
Exhibition HistoryWest Meets East: Prints from the Permanent Collection, Wood Gallery, The Hyde Collection, November 4, 2018 - December 30, 2018

Toulouse-Lautrec & Company: Prints from the Belle Époque, March 3 - May 27, 2012Provenanceby 2011, New York, NY, Posters Please
2011, Houston, TX, Tobin Sparling
2014, Glens Falls, NY, The Hyde Collection Trust