Homework: The Little Schoolboy Writing, Ca 1910: French Modern Master

A tender and fresh depiction and of a schoolboy who is writing at a table.

The child is still young enough to be struggling a little with the quill he is holding - but he is clearly engrossed in whatever he is working on.

It is a work by Pierre Laprade (1875-1931) which has great immediacy. Laprade was a French artist who was at the forefront of modernity: he encountered Matisse and in 1900, and exhibited alongside him with the Fauves, at the 1905 Salon d'Autumne.

Ambroise Vollard, one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century, bought his first work from Laprade's in 1900, and gave him a one-man show in 1901. Vollard, of course is famous for his flair for discovering numerous then-unknown artists, such as Paul Czanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Louis Valtat, Pablo Picasso, Andr Derain and Vincent van Gogh.

Laprade exhibited in some of the most prestigious galleries in Europe, including with Druet and Bernheim-Jeune, as well as at the Armory Show in New York (in 1913), and in Chicago. His paintings are in the collection of the Louvre and in a multitude of French and international museums.

The painting here presented is a mixed media graphite watercolour on paper, dating from the 1910s or 20s. It has wonderful provenance: it was acquired by a previous owner in 1935 at the Paris auction house "Drouot", at a charity sale for the "Cercle Ronsard"

The "Cercle Ronsard" was an organisation to help ... unemployed intellectuals! (See Christie's auction 2354; where a work by Vuillard was auctioned for the same charity)

On the verso of the frame features the catalogue entry of the picture in the auction.

At sight the artwork measures 12 x 19 cm, the overall framed size in its simple early 20th Century 1930s frame with some wear is 24 x 32 cm approx.

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Date of manufacture : 1910