Arresting Art Deco pochoir plate by Maurice Berty. Three figures stand among the rocks under the orange limbs of an old tree. At the centre, seen from behind, the young stonecutter is barefoot in a white shirt and violet cape with a leather tool-belt and a sheaf of green at his hip, one hand raised as he speaks. Facing him is a gentleman in a hard hat and violet riding coat with a game bag and a long fowling piece grounded at his feet, and at the left an old man in a green cap and rust-red coat leans on a stick and listens. Signed in the plate at the lower left, "Maurice Berty," and marked "Le Tailleur de Pierres de Saint-Point h. t. 4," with the line it illustrates printed beneath the image: "... car la peine, ce n'est pas l'homme, c'est Dieu qui la paye!..." In English: for toil is not paid for by man, it is God who pays it.
The three costumes carry the entire argument of the scene, which is what makes it a good picture rather than just an illustration. The huntsman's tailored coat and gun, the old man's stick and heavy coat, the workman's bare feet and belt of tools: Berty has staged the social distance between them and then given the line to the barefoot one, hand up, telling the landowner that a man's labour is not paid for by other men. That was Lamartine the politician as much as Lamartine the poet; he sat in the Assembly and helped run the provisional government of 1848 before he wrote this book.
From the Collection Lotus volume of Lamartine published by Editions Nilsson, Paris, about 1930, which gathers Graziella together with Le Tailleur de pierres de Saint-Point and carries six aquarelles by Maurice Berty. Collection Lotus was sold under the motto of the luxury book within everyone's reach, and the pochoir plates are what made that claim stick: each colour laid on by hand through its own cut stencil, on Japanese paper, in small workshops of colourists.
Original antique pochoir plate on Japanese paper, hand-stencilled in watercolour, not a reproduction. Sheet measures 6.5 x 9 in. Light age toning to the sheet as usual for this paper; the colour is unfaded and strong.
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