The First Cigarette — Pavis

A quietly observed Parisian interior in which a young woman lights her first cigarette of the morning.

Original French title: La Première Cigarette. Drawn by Georges Pavis. Published in La Vie Parisienne, Paris, c. 1910.

Georges Pavis worked for La Vie Parisienne across the Belle Époque and inter-war years, building a quiet reputation for figure studies of unhurried domestic moments. The cigarette in early twentieth-century imagery was a marker of feminine modernity, and Pavis treats it here with characteristic restraint, the gesture absorbing the entire scene.

Chromolithograph. Sheet size approximately 38.0 × 28.9 cm. Very Good.