A watercolor drawing of the famous (since 1862) Cafe du Monde in the old Vieux Carre (French Quarter) of New Orleans, Louisiana, signed at lower left by listed American artist PIERRE MENAGER (1894-1973). The work is dated there 1942. Menager was born in Nantes, France and traveled widely during his life within the southern and western United States, creating art wherever he went. He is best known for landscapes and seascapes of California and the Southwest. A member of the Painters and Sculptors Club of Los Angeles in the mid 1920s, he was in Santa Fe, New Mexico by 1927, and moved on to Tucson, Arizona in 1938. During the 1950s and 1960s the restless artist was in New Orleans, before passing away in South Florida in 1973. This drawing measures 12" by 16" (17 1/2" by 22" framed). It is not a colorful work, seeing as that it is in one color, but what it lacks in color it makes up for in line and activity. Numerous picturesque figures go about their business in the almost sub-tropical town by the banks of the Mississippi, the tendance architecture and figures with their tropical fruit wares lending an almost Caribbean feel to the scene. Note especially the barefoot, pipe-smoking black woman at right, balancing a neatly tied up bundle on her head, piles of bananas and melons or coconuts adjacent to her. The mat is pasted down over the drawing, partially covering the bottom portion of the signature. The work is in good condition, although it has been glued down to the board backing, as was commonly done at mid-century, sometimes by framers. The paper is puckered, simply perhaps from the original moisture of the paper being wet with paint. **NO GLASS***