Woman Entering a Fiacre (recto); Right Profile of Man Wearing Tall Hat (verso)

probably late 19th century

Woman Entering a Fiacre (recto); Right Profile of Man Wearing Tall Hat (verso), probably late 19th century. Attributed to Jean Louis Forain (French, 1852–1931). Charcoal with black ink framing lines (recto); charcoal (verso); sheet: 32.4 x 24.9 cm (12 3/4 x 9 13/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Muriel Butkin 2018.45 This image captures the bustling activity of urban Paris in the late 1800s. A fashionable woman climbs into a fiacre—a four-wheeled carriage—from the street curb. Her driver, seated at front, watches as she enters. The artist’s loose, sketchy rendering of the charcoal further emphasizes the sensation of busy city life evoked in this drawing.