Label Text:
Jean Louis Forain began his artistic training in the atelier of Jean-Leon Gérôme and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but found that strict academic training was not to his liking. He then became a student of Jean Baptiste Carpeaux, who encouraged him to draw from life and use these figures in his compositions. He greatly admired Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists in the Independent exhibitions during the late 1880s. He first made etchings in 1875-76, the same year he began a profitable career as an illustrator, for which he would become well known throughout France.
Although he made many lithographs, the images in Forain's portfolio De la Marne au Rhin were photomechanical reproductions of illustrations he contributed to the journal Le Figaro during World War I. At the age of 62, the artist joined the army and became a member of the camouflage corps, in addition to drawing and providing captions for his illustrations.
L'école des neutres II was in all likelihood drawn before 1917, as it refers ironically to Woodrow Wilson's policy of neutrality, which ended when the United States officially entered the war in April 1917.
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