The Auction

Les Enchères (French title) Lithograph printed on wove chine paper. Reference: not listed in BN-IFF. It’s unclear that this composition was ever printed in any kind of edition. It most certainly could have been created as a book illustration, in which case the five remarques (marginal sketches) would certainly have been removed. This amusing composition, in which a woman is, quite unusually for the time, the auctioneer (in French: commissaire-priseur) of a book sale could easily have fitted in any number of contexts. She is threatening to bring the hammer down on the lot currently for sale, and has her pen at the ready, to take down the name of the winning bidder. Signed in the stone.