Theophile Alexandre Steinlen - l'Aveu De La Faute - Lithograph

Theophile Alexandre STEINLEN (1859 – 1923)
27×20 cm / 40×30 cm encadrée
1894
Lithograph
27×20 cm / 40×30 cm framed
Signed in the plate, in the character's dress, and countersigned “Steinlen” in pencil at the bottom right / Numbered “98” in pencil at the bottom left
Restorations of a fold and a small tear in the upper margin

This lithograph is part of the corpus of works by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen created to illustrate musical scores and was designed for the song L'Aveu de la fault by Hector Sombre set to music by Gustave Goubli. It represents a very elegant young woman, dressed entirely in black, kneeling on a prie-dieu in front of the gate of a church chapel, her head buried in her hands.
Steinlen's composition, whose graphic treatment reflects the influence of his friend Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, is faithful to the spirit of the lyricist's text and arouses in the viewer the desire to discover what is the fault confessed by the young female. Steinlen offers us a clue through the red color of his hair since it is often associated in art with seduction, adultery and lust. The lyrics of the song confirm this because the woman confesses to having committed the sin of the flesh... with a young man of such divine beauty that she had first taken him for Christ!
Numbered 98, our proof is one of 40 copies on vellum colored with the pattern, which bear the numbers ranging from 61 to 100, out of a total edition of 100 copies of the 1st state, before the text of the song.
More explicit, the composition by Henri Gabriel Ibels created a year earlier to illustrate this song represents a young woman kissing Christ. Steinlen's version maintains the suspense, the plot only being revealed as the words are read.