Jean-Emile LaboureurConsidérations sur la gravure originale

He illustrated works by Stendhal, Wilde, Proust, Gide and Paul-Jean Toulet, and was also the engraving teacher of Marie Laurencin and André Dunoyer de Ségonzac in his Parisian studio. Most of his graphic work is now preserved in the Louvre and Orsay museums, as well as in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Yet, how many people today could claim to know even the name of Jean-Émile Laboureur? Painter, draughtsman, engraver and illustrator, Jean-Émile Laboureur (1877-1943) is nevertheless the author of a monumental body of work, which includes almost two thousand engravings. In other words, and as Louis Godefroy so rightly pointed out: “The engraved work of Jean-Émile Laboureur is a mirror in which the harmonies of a Poulenc and a Stravinsky, the lyricism of a Claudel and a Valéry, the graphics of a Matisse and a Picasso come together.