Mermaid on Deauville Beach — Léonnec

A whimsical seaside vignette in which a mermaid is improbably hauled ashore on the most fashionable beach in Normandy.

Original French title: Sur la Plage de Deauville, le 1er Octobre. Drawn by Georges Léonnec. Published in La Vie Parisienne, Paris, 1 October 1915.

Deauville was the summer haunt of fashionable Paris, and Léonnec's mermaid pun trades on its reputation for elegant absurdity. La Vie Parisienne ran a long line of these mythical-marine fantasies, the holiday-season cover offering an annual licence for nudes lightly disguised as folklore.

Chromolithograph. Sheet size approximately 37.6 × 28.6 cm. Very Good.