La vague (The Wave)

This lithograph offers a taste of the caricatures Henri Jossot drew by the hundreds. Here he ridiculed the Japonisme craze that swept through the Parisian art world: Hokusai's Great Wave upends a dandified artist who headed out to sketch a seascape, easel and canvas in hand. In direct parody of Japanese woodcuts, Jossot cut off the figure at the edge of the picture plane. In the lower left corner is the Alexandre Charpentier-designed blind stamp, a mark of connoisseurship identifying L'Estampe originale prints.