Auguste Lepere (1849-1918)
The Barrier: Daybreak, Sunday Parisians
c. 1870-1890
Etching
4 x 3 1/2 ” (10.16 x 8.89 cm)
Wetmore Print Collection, Connecticut College
FW-0294
This print depicts a redefinition of class boundaries in public leisure places in late-19th-century France. A new class was emerging, the petite-bourgeoisie or lower middle class, who had working class origins but wanted bourgeois membership. They assimilated by joining leisure places and emulating the fashions of the bourgeois. Crowds of petite-bourgeoisie with two members of the bourgeois (defined by the man’s top hat and monocle and the woman’s dress, hat, and parasol), are enjoying a Sunday excursion along the Seine during their one day off of work. Lepere asserts the revolutionary mingling of classes and the right to leisure that was debated in French government at the time.
