The Swiss-born French artist Théophile Alexandre Steinlen is best known for his prints; the posters he created for the cabaret Le Chat Noir are among the most recognisable images of Belle Epoque Paris, and he was a prolific contributor of illustrations to numerous avant-garde and satirical journals. Most of his illustrations and poster designs were lithographs or made by photomechanical processes, but he also made etchings, producing a body of 100 over the course of his career.

This etching is a portrait of the poet Jehan Rictus (the pseudonym of Gabriel Randon,1867-1933), who, like Steinlen, had a long association with Paris’s cabarets, where he regularly performed his poems written in popular language. Rictus was a frequent subject of Steinlen’s portraits, appearing in two other prints as well as several drawings and at least one painting. This etching shows him around the time of the publication of his last volume of poems, Le Coeur populaire (1914). This impression of what appears to be the first state (without the elaborate remarque of the second state) was given by Steinlen as a gift to the master printer, Eugène Delâtre, as indicated in the inscription, illustrating another link in a network of friendships among the Paris avant-garde at the turn of the century.

Gift of the artist to Eugène Delâtre (French, 1864–1938); Eric G. Carlson (1940-2016), New York (by 2000 [his stock number verso]), from whom purchased 18 March 2013 by Dr Donato Esposito (b.1973); gift 2015.