About this work
departs sharply from the boudoir world for which Icart is most celebrated. The composition draws on the full iconography of the Maid of Orléans — chainmail, sword, religious banner, armor, and the emblems of a battle-worn heroine — rendered with the fluid draughtsmanship that was Icart's signature. Where his typical subjects lounge in silks and candlelight, here the figure commands space with an upright, martial authority. The palette, while still shaped by Icart's characteristic hand-coloring, would have moved toward cooler silvers and steeled blues, the warmth of his Parisian interiors giving way to something more solemn and resolute. The work is executed as an etching with drypoint, printed in colours with hand-colouring on wove paper, and measures approximately 69.5 × 55 cm (27⅜ × 21⅝ in.) — a substantial sheet that carries considerable presence.
Icart created this *Jeanne d'Arc* in 1929 , at the very peak of his commercial and artistic powers. In the late 1920s, Icart was very successful both artistically and financially , and the popularity of his etchings peaked in the Art Deco era. Choosing Joan of Arc as a subject at this moment was a pointed act: the Maid had only recently been canonized in 1920 and declared a patron saint of France, having become a national symbol of France after the French Revolution, canonized by Pope Benedict XV. For Icart — who had served as a fighter pilot in the First World War and made countless sketches and etchings with patriotic themes during that conflict — the subject carried genuine weight. The work sits at the intersection of his deep French patriotism and his lifelong fascination with powerful, expressive female figures. It is, as critics have observed, the logical extreme of his entire vision: the women of Louis Icart are the women of France as we have imagined them to be — Eve, Leda, Venus, Scheherazade, and Joan of Arc, all wrapped up into an irresistible package.
On the wall, *Jeanne d'Arc* carries a different charge than most Icart prints — less atmosphere, more conviction. It belongs in a space that can hold a strong vertical presence: a library, a dark-panelled study, a hallway that asks something of the viewer before they pass through. Icart often enhanced his etchings with hand-coloring, giving each piece a unique, painterly quality — meaning no two impressions read exactly alike in natural light. The viewer this work speaks to is someone drawn to French history and national mythology as much as to Art Deco craft; someone who wants the decor
