Master Art

Although Maurice Langaskens rarely dated his work, this sketch on panel can be dated to around 1930. Drawn with pen and black ink and watercolour on a plywood panel, it is a study for a colour aquatint by Langaskens entitled Le Géographe. In both the drawing and the related print, the man appears to be examining a map of the city of Brussels. The artist created a number of drawn and etched variants of this subject, with an elderly man intensely studying a map, an atlas or a globe.

An analogous subject is also found in a small panel of an entomologist scrutinizing an insect - of similar dimensions, medium and technique to the present panel - which appeared at auction in Paris in 2008.