Les Honnêtes femmes; Conférence, Poésies inédites d'Henry Becque; La Parisienne

After Albert Besnard

National Gallery of Art

Printed with smoky gray and black tones on cream-white paper, a man wearing a dark suit raises a cane as if to strike as a skeleton crouches beside him in this vertical halftone print. To the left, the man’s short hair blows back as he raises his right arm, to our left, across his body. His brow is deeply furrowed, his eyes scrunched, and his mouth open. His cane reaches behind his head. A top hat along his left side, to our right, could belong to him or another person in the indistinct background. To the right, the skeleton sits with knees drawn up and one hand under its chin. A garland of roses drapes around its neck and down between its legs. The body is wrapped in a light cloth. Three large black birds, perhaps oversized crows, swoop to our left from the top right corner, their wings wide and beaks reaching forward. The setting is drawn in with shading and indistinct forms, suggesting deep shadows and perhaps swirling sky. The scene is framed with a black line and the word “Programme” appears across the bottom. A monogram of a conjoined “AB” is in the lower right corner of the image, and a tiny, printed inscription in the lower left reads, “M.X. Sc.”