About this work
*Le Sopha* is a suite of 23 etchings in color on wove paper , each sheet measuring a refined, intimate scale — from Icart's illustrated book of the same name, published in 1935, with individual images approximately 4½ × 6½ inches. The scenes unfolding across the series are characteristic of Icart at his most theatrically charged: languid figures in interior settings, soft drapery caught mid-motion, the atmosphere of a private encounter suspended in elegant tension. Icart drew on his instinctive gift for charged negative space, rendering figures with fluid contour lines against lushly hand-colored backgrounds — warm rose, amber, and ivory tones that feel less like pigment and more like candlelight. The prints carry an unmistakable Rococo inflection: featherlight draftsmanship, sumptuous interiors, and figures whose poses seem borrowed from Fragonard and then electrified with a thoroughly modern restlessness.
Published in Paris in 1935 by Le Vasseur et Cie, *Le Sopha* was issued in a limited edition of 517.
The illustrations were not merely printed pictures — they were actual etchings printed from Icart's individual copper plates, then hand-colored. The project was a literary collaboration: *Le Sopha, conte moral* was originally a 1742 libertine novel by Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon.
The story concerns a young courtier, Amanzéï, whose soul was condemned by Brahma to inhabit a series of sofas, and who recounts the adventures of seven couples he witnessed — all set within an orientalist frame evocative of the Arabian Nights.
*Le Sopha* is, in essence, a novel of manners told from the point of view of a decorative object — a premise tailor-made for Icart, who had spent his career finding the erotic charge hidden within the domestic and the ornamental. The commission allowed him to synthesize his two great inheritances: the sensuality of 18th-century French painting and the graphic precision of the Art Deco livre d'artiste tradition.
On the wall, a print from this series rewards a viewer who appreciates art that carries literary weight without demanding it be explained. The intimate scale and warm palette make it naturally suited to a study, bedroom, or reading room where the light is soft and the surroundings are quietly curated — a space that already holds old books, dark wood, and objects with histories. The illustrations in Icart's erotic books were not signed , which gives each print an additional quality of discretion — it belongs to those who know, rather than advertising itself. For collectors drawn to the intersection of Art Deco graphic virtuosity and French literary culture, *Le Sopha* is
