L’Englise de leurs peres c. 1914 - 1919

Jean-Louis Forain made this lithograph called L’Englise de leurs peres, probably sometime around the turn of the century. It's all about marks, the scribbled, tentative, searching kind that make up the image of a man pointing something out to a group of children. The physical quality of the lithograph—the grain of the stone, the pressure of the crayon—plays a crucial role. The marks aren't just lines, they're textured with a life of their own. Look at the way the lines build up the form of the man’s jacket, dense and dark, versus the sketchy outlines of the children around him. There's a kind of urgency to the line, a feeling of capturing a fleeting moment. It reminds me a bit of Daumier, another artist who was a master of capturing the everyday dramas of Parisian life, also using lithography. Like Daumier, Forain isn't giving us a definitive statement, but inviting us to contemplate the complexities and ambiguities of human experience.