The Happy Sailor (Le Marin joyeux)

In 1925, André Lhote explored scenes of contemporary life in six woodcuts devoted to the sea, sailors, and the racy world of bars, prostitutes and other ports of call pleasures. While views of actual waterfront entertainments predominate, one composition features the mythic mermaid of sea lore tempting by her seductive call and body a distant masted ship.

The appearance of Lhote’s cycle coincided with the great international exposition in Paris that year, which introduced to a wide audience the jazzy rhythms and syncopated patterns of Art Deco architecture and design. The art and culture of Black Africa and Oceania were important sources of inspiration for Art Deco, especially in France. The display of such non-western art forms and European objects inspired by these sources at the Paris fair were in part fueled by French colonial aspirations, and Lhote’s cycle of prints perhaps hints at this political and commercial situation through scenes of sailors at sea and on leave in "exotic" ports outside France.

With this type of complex and allegorical imagery, Lhote along with Jacques Villon and other Cubist artists working in Paris before and after World War I broke away from the traditional genres of still life, landscape, and portraiture that Braque, Picasso, and Marcoussis exclusively explored in their graphic production.