The title invites us to read the scene as an instruction, and the portly figures are set out like specimens, or lots to be appraised and ranked, as if in a lesson on how to weigh and choose a suitor.
Provenance
Jean-François Guérin Fine Art, Maisons-Laffitte, 1990
Galerie Jane Roberts, Paris, 2017
Private collection, Dallas, Texas (acquired from the above)
Exhibited
Maisons-Laffitte, Jean-François Guérin Fine Art, Henry Somm (1844-1907), 1990, no. 32.
Paris, Galerie Jane Roberts, Une vie parisienne, Henry Somm (1844-1907), Dessins, aquarelles, gravures, 23 March-28 April 2017, no.15.
Literature
E.K. Menon, “Henry Somm: Impressionist, Japoniste or sympolist?,” Master Drawings, London, vol. 33, no. 1, Spring 1995, p.3-29, pl. 21, p. 25
Catalogue note
"More than any other artist, Somm is the painter of the Parisienne; not the Society woman, but the prettily dressed girl who runs the streets, her nose in the air, laughing unceremoniously at the compliments of the passers-by […]." In 1893, these words by Louis Morin, the leading spirit of the Chat Noir, introduce perfectly the drawings at hand. Morin, who counted Somm as "a man of wit […] and one of the finest humorists of this subtle milieu of Montmartre," could hardly have described them better: in each sheet a fashionable young Parisienne of the demimonde goes window shopping in the streets of Paris.
In At the Puppet Seller, the woman stands before a toy shop, its window lettered "Jouets." Elaborately turned out in a closely fitted trained gown and a plumed hat, she promenades alone with a knowing, coquettish air, the very image of a cocotte. From one hand she idly dangles a pantin, a jointed jumping jack in motley clown costume, by its string, a fitting emblem for a woman who keeps her admirers, like playthings, at her command.
The Lesson develops the same theme in pen and brown ink, with the men now present, and here Somm's humor turns broader. A stylish young woman, again alone and composed, turns and gestures with an open hand among a row of numbered stalls, behind which loom stout bourgeois gentlemen in top hats, drawn with caricatural relish. The title invites us to read the scene as an instruction, and the portly figures are set out like specimens, or lots to be appraised and ranked, as if in a lesson on how to weigh and choose a suitor.
Together the drawings make a witty diptych on the Parisienne who commands the men around her, whether they take the form of a toy on a string or a lineup of eager admirers.