Beach Idyll — Vallet

A buoyant wartime seaside scene where a soldier on leave courts a fashionable bather amid the dunes.

Original French title: Une Idylle Bâtie sur le Sable. Drawn by Louis Vallet. Published in La Vie Parisienne, Paris, c. 1917.

La Vie Parisienne was the most chic of French weeklies, mixing fashion, satire, and social reportage. During the First World War its illustrators turned coastal flirtation into a genre of its own — a counter-narrative of leisure that reassured readers of life carrying on behind the lines.

Chromolithograph. Sheet size approximately 37.0 × 28.4 cm. Very Good.