L'Entomologiste (The Entomologist or The Insect Collector)

Jean-Émile Laboureur, artist

1877–1943

L'Entomologiste (The Entomologist or The Insect Collector), 1932–1933

Where object was made: France

Material/technique: Rives BFK™ paper; engraving

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 347 x 397 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 13 11/16 x 15 5/8 in
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): 375 x 415 mm
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): 14 3/4 x 16 5/16 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 448 x 558 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 17 5/8 x 21 15/16 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 20 x 25 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Elmer F. Pierson Fund

Accession number: 2016.0255

Not on display

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This engraving from the early 1930s is one of the artist’s largest and most celebrated works. Among the hum of insect and plant life there is a clear expression of biophilia, a term coined by entomologist and biologist Edward O. Wilson in 1984. If “plant blindness” is the general notion that humans do not notice their slow-moving botanical environments, then this print expresses its opposite. We likely notice leaves, trees, and grasses and the insects they support before we notice the botanophiliac entomologist quietly at work.

Laboureur was an itinerant painter, watercolorist, lithographer, and book illustrator active in France, the United States, and Canada. He is best known for his elegant and sinuous handling of the burin, an engraving tool, in his engravings that are stylistically situated between Cubism and Art Deco.