Laurens' technique was as varied as his subject matter. His remarkable mastery of traditional methods of painting and above all his ability to adapt them to the subject matter is striking. He developed new techniques in his mural paintings, which can be seen in "Le Lauraguais" (1897) on the first floor of the Capitole in Toulouse. Like a large watercolour, it is painted freely using a tempera method that leaves the underlying charcoal traces of the preliminary drawings showing through the colours.
His illustrations are those of an indisputably excellent draughtsman, even if his use of colour remains an obligation for this born painter who reworked some of his studies for Episodes from Merovingian History in oils. His etchings for a re-edition of Goethe's Faust (1885), Souvenirs de grandeur militaire or la Canne de jonc (1898) by Alfred de Vigny, for Victor Hugo's Pope, or l'Imitation de Jésus-Christ (1878) testify to his expertise in giving a monumental aspect to his small format works.
Laurens provided numerous sketches for tapestries manufactured at the Gobelins workshops in Paris. Here, he also seemed to compose his sketches with the technical constraints of the tapestry in mind, using half-tones for the solid background areas and saturating the decorative elements with high colour.
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