This rare original lithograph, c. 1830, is hand-colored and presented on buff wove paper. It's titled: "RÉCRÉATIONS (P1.30)" at the top and then captioned, "Tenues de Soirées sans façons." The artist was known for satirizing his contemporaries, so perhaps the woman in the middle is the target for her informal or somehow inappropriate "evening attire."

At the bottom: Publié par Giraldon Bovinet, Passage Vivienne, no. 26. The British Museum lists Giraldon-Bovinet as a publisher/printer active 1820-1830, with addresses in both Paris and London. Page size: 12"W by 8.5"H. Image size: 6"W by 6"H.

The artist, Henry Monnier (Henry-Bonaventure Monnier) was a French playwright, caricaturist, and actor (7 June 1799 in Paris – 3 January 1877). From Wikipedia: His meetings with Alexandre Dumas, Théophile Gautier, Stendhal, Eugène Sue, Prosper Mérimée, Eugène Scribe, Eugène Delacroix, Louis Boulanger and Honoré de Balzac opened doors to him. Between 1827 and 1832, he produced several albums of lithographs, satirizing the mores and physiognomies of his contemporaries. He created the character Monsieur Prudhomme, of whom Balzac said was the "illustration of the type of the Parisian middle-class" and who inspired the poem of that title in Paul Verlaine's Poèmes saturniens.

Monnier is also credited with originating the famous phrase, "On devrait construire les villes à la campagne, l’air y est tellement plus pur !"

This antique lithograph is donated to this fundraiser from the personal collection of Robert Flynn Johnson. Johnson is a collector, author and a Curator Emeritus of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Similar pieces sell for $250-$300.