Charity ball program with lithograph - 1924

Rare benefit ball program with lithography – Paris, 1924
This original printed program booklet, published on June 20, 1924, in Paris, was issued on the occasion of the 'Fête et Souper Dansant' in aid of the Phare de France (a charity organization for French soldiers blinded in the war).
The event possessed extraordinary social and diplomatic significance.
Patron was Myron T. Herrick, the then ambassador of the United States in Paris, and the venue was the residence of Madame la Duchesse de Talleyrand (50, avenue du Bois de Boulogne – now Avenue Foch).
The evening represented a meeting point for the French and American elite, aristocracy, and diplomacy in the immediate post-World War I period, and is also a symbolic document of French-American solidarity.
The lithography
Especially valuable is the original, signed lithograph preceding the booklet.
artists
Maurice Walter Edmond Labatt de Lambert (1873–1953)
who often signed his graphic works with the artist name 'Maurice de Lambinet'.
On the lithograph, there is a handwritten signature.
Maurice de Lambinet, 1924
Brief biography of the artist
Recognized French illustrator, painter, and copperplate engraver.
Illustrator of works by Victor Hugo and Guy de Maupassant
active in the circle around Gustave Moreau
represented in museums and public collections
Active in the fields of theater, book, and social graphics.
The lithograph is not a later reproduction but an original work created specifically for this event, which is of particular artistic and documentary value.
Why is this object extraordinary?
Testimony of humanitarian and societal history after the First World War
Original, signed, and dated lithograph
Document of Parisian high society of the 1920s
Significance for the history of French-American relations: a comparable specimen in a museum collection (Musée Carnavalet, Paris).
Summary
This program booklet is much more than a fleeting print product.
It is a multifaceted historical object that:
artistic value
social and cultural historical significance
as well as the humanitarian memory of the post-war period.
Especially suitable for collectors, museums, and enthusiasts of early 20th-century French and American history.