A woman lifts tiny human puppets above a sleeping city

Seen from behind, a nude woman kneels on a rooftop above a huddled sepia city, her hair knotted up, and lifts two small human figures into the air — one dangling from her raised left hand, one held out at her right. Two more tiny bodies tumble through the sky above her, arms flung wide, caught in the same invisible strings. A draped sleeping form lies along the parapet at her knees. Roux etched Les Pantins in the middle of his short career, and the joke in it is bitter: the puppeteer is naked, and turned away from us.

Marcel Roux (1878–1922) was a French etcher from Lyon whose short career produced some of the blackest images in Symbolist printmaking — death dancing, reapers at work, spiders and plagues, all bitten into the plate with extraordinary technical control. He exhibited with the Salon d'Automne, was decorated for his war service, and died at forty-four.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.