La Scène du Balcon ("Si Roméo et Juliette étaient nos contemporains...")
Paris: La Vie Parisienne, circa 1916–1920s.
Print: 9 1/4" x 12 3/4" Mat: 18 1/4" x 14 3/4". Color lithograph leaf, a moonlit balcony scene in indigo and slate blue: a young man in argyle stockings and plus-fours scales a wrought-iron rail toward a bob-haired young woman leaning down to meet him, a walled town and church spire silhouetted below a full moon. Captioned Si Roméo et Juliette étaient nos contemporains... / La Scène du Balcon, drawn by Vald'Es. Matted.
Vald'Es was the joint signature of painters Georges d'Espagnat (1870–1950) and Louis Denis-Valvérane (1870–1943), regular contributors to the magazine's roster of Jazz-Age illustrators. Founded in 1863 as a chronicle of fashionable Paris, La Vie Parisienne turned toward frank Art Deco social satire and glamour illustration in the early twentieth century — flappers, modern romance, gentle undress — a shift that made it one of the era's most popular and widely imitated weeklies.
Item #144214Price: $60.00