Women Who Read and Write Too Much

By Stephen J. Gertz

Look at that! Instead of milk she is pouring shoe polish
into my hot chocolate! Enough with that damned novel!

In 1844, French painter and caricaturist Honoré Daumier published Les Bas Bleus, a series of forty lithographs satirizing bluestockings, i.e. intellectual women. They turn traditional gender roles topsy-turvy and cramp a man's style.

Instead of doing the laundry they hang men out to dry. Sacrebleu!

Oh Agony!.... To have spent my maidenhood dreaming of a
husband who, like me, adored hallowed poetry, and to wind up
with a husband who only likes to bait dudgeons...
the man was born to be a pike!...

Of Les Bas Bleus Gordon Ray wrote, "the bluestockings of this series are almost all literary ladies, and Daumier's satire is directed as much against the literary character in general as its feminine manifestations. At the same time, his attitude towards his subjects is consistently severe, and the fact that he made all forty plates in eight months, whereas most of his longer series extended over several years, suggests that they were inspired by deep-seated and well-developed convictions...

Goodbye Flora, my dear... don't forget to send two copies
of your frothy little pieces to the newspaper office...
and I shall whip them up in my article.

"Advocates of women's rights have as little reason to be grateful to Daumier for Les bas bleus as Jews have to be grateful to Forain for Psst...! [1898-99]... Nevertheless, the album contains some masterly designs" (The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp 241-242).

- A woman like me... sew on a button?.... you must be out of your mind!
- So be it!... It's not enough that she is wearing my breeches...
she has to throw them on my head!!

In other words, despite its gentle humor and artful compositions Les Bas Bleus by Daumier is staunchly anti-feminist. Though they never signed it literary ladies upset the social contract. Womens rights is a zero-sum game; when women gain, men lose. Vive le difference, death to equality.

May I come in my dear, or are you still collaborating with Monsieur?

Daumier was not inclined to depict women as traditionally beautiful creatures to begin with; his eyes were jaundiced. Comparing Daumier with his contemporary, Gavarni, Ray continued:

Ever since Virginie obtained the seventh honorable mention
for poetry at the Académie Française, I, a captain of the
National Guard, am supposed to count the sheets for the laundry
every Saturday. If I don't do it , my wife will wash my head...

"If Daumier could not draw a pretty woman, as is sometimes alleged, Gavarni at this period could hardly draw an ugly one" (The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp 220-221).

- The artist captured me as I was writing my melancholic book
entitled "Sorrows of my soul." The eyes came out quite well but
the nose is not sorrowful enough!...
- (Man, sotto voce) - No... it is just in a sorry state...

If Daumier can be blamed for this pointed visual social satire, his publisher, Charles Philipon, may be responsible for each plate's verbal sally. Daumier had collaborated with Philipon when creating political satire for Philipon's notorious La Caricature, Philipon often suggesting the subject/theme and writing the caption.

- Devilish brat! Why don't you let me compose in peace
my ode on the happiness of maternity!
- All right, all right...... he is going to be quiet.....
I am going to give him a good whipping in the other room.
(aside): from looking at what my wife is writing in her work,
it is she who makes the most noise of all.

When, after La Caricature shuttered, Philipon established Le Charivari, Daumier joined him in this journal of social satire, whence Les Bas Bleus originally appeared as a serial. Their previous collaborative formula may have continued: Philipon writing the jokes, Daumier visualizing them.

(Collaborations between caricaturists and publishers were not unusual at all. Twenty-five years before Les Bas Bleus was published British caricaturist George Cruikshank and publisher-bookseller William Hone often collaborated on political satires. Publishers had their eye on current social and political events, chose topical subjects that they thought would appeal to the public, and called upon an artist to realize the caricature).

Hell and damnation! hissed!... whistled!... booed!

It would be interesting to know what Marie-Françoise Aubert, wife of printing house Chez Aubert proprietor Gabriel Aubert, and sister of Charles Philipon (who set the couple up in business in order to handle the printing of his magazines and lithographs), thought of Daumier's (and her brother's) attitude about women. Hers was the brain that managed Chez Aubert to prosperity. Perhaps successful business women were accorded respect that bluestockings, with their heads in the air within books, were denied.

This is an extremely rare book. OCLC records on one copy of Les Bas Bleus in institutional holdings worldwide, not, incredibly, at the BNF, but, rather, at the Morgan Library, and it has never been at auction since ABPC began recording results in 1923. 

As for the ladies of France taking on literary airs blame it on Georges Sand, a baleful influence on contemporary womanhood and generations of women to come. Next thing you know, they'll be a female Secretary of State of the U.S.A. French fries? Non! Freedom fries? Non, non!! Fuggetaboutit fries? Oui!

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DAUMIER, Honoré.  Les Bas Bleus. Paris: Chez Aubert, 1844.

First edition. Tall quarto (13 1/2 x 10 3/8 in; 341 x 262 mm). Forty hand-colored lithographed plates.  Lith. by Imp. Aubert.

Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 169. Daumier Register 1221 - 1260.
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Caption translations from the French by The Daumier Register.

The Daumier Register needs your help.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Of related interest:

Scarce Daumier Childrens Books at Daumier Register.

Tonight On "The Bachelor": Daumier's Single Man.

A Rare Suite of Pre-Political Lithographs By Charles Philipon Surfaces.
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Scarce Daumier Childrens Books at Daumier Registry

by Stephen J. Gertz

The Daumier Registry has just added some very special items: abecedaires for children by the great artist and caricaturist. 

In 1835-1836 Parisian print publisher Chez Aubert offered a series of "Macédoines," small booklets measuring only 14 x 9 cm, containing an alphabet with easy to understand texts for children.

At the end of each Macédoine was an accordion-format panorama displaying the twenty-four letters of the French alphabet married with charming images by Daumier. Children were encouraged by the publisher to hand-color the pictures, thus integrating play into learning the alphabet.

As a result these booklets, formally titled Petites Macédoines d'Aubert: Alphabet en deux planches et en Panorama and published December 16, 1835 (possibly reissued in 1836 as Alphabet en bande lithographiée), did not withstand the onslaught of enthusiastic  little hands; worn to pulp, they have subsequently disappeared over time. 

Now,  only three complete, hand-coloured ‘Panorama’ Macédoines remain extant: at the Morgan Library in New York, at Harvard, and at the Princeton-Cotsen Library. Only one single, ‘untouched’ black and white copy can presently be found in the Noack private collection in Switzerland. Dieter and Lilian Noack are the publishers of the Daumier Registry website, the first and most complete digital collection of Daumier, based upon their collection, with over 4000 lithographs, 1000 wood engravings, and 550 oil paintings.

The Noacks also publish the Daumier Website, which provides information about Daumier's life and oeuvre, including a detailed biography, a bibliography with over 1750 titles, a list of close to 950 Daumier exhibitions, descriptions of Le Charivari and other newspapers, an exhibition of Daumier fakes and imitations, Daumier News and Discussion Forum and an exhibition of unpublished Daumier prints, etc. 

The Daumier Registry and Daumier Websites, both multi-lingual, are the go-to spots for all things Daumier.

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Tonight On "The Bachelor": Daumier's Single Man

Previously on The Bachelor: In an unprecedented twist, M. Coquelet, our current little rooster, eliminated every eligible special someone. Though successful, sincere, emotionally secure, educated and accomplished, impressive, attractive and alluring, appropriately desperate (yet not suicidal), Britney, Tabitha, Amanda, Helene, Jennifer, Kristen, Brooke, Jessica, Tara, Sarah, Sadie, Tessa, Chelsea, Molly, and Vienna were each given their walking papers and left a trail of tears as the final credits rolled, each withheld rose a slap in the face.

There's just no pleasing some men.

And so in this episode of The Bachelor we follow M. Coquelet, smug and satisfied in his narrow little world, all alone with his pets, following his arid routine, and denying the loneliness that rises up when his guard is down.

It's boring television but the producers have put together a commemorative album to chronicle this sad affair of a man too stupid to know how empty his life is and blind to the solution just a single, long-stemmed rose away.

Presenting:

Plate One. 7 HEURES DU MATIN. Réveil de Mr. Coquelet. 

Minette et Azor se disputent le baiser paternel 

Mr. Coquelet souris à cette touchante rivalité. 

(Seven in the morning. Mr. Cockerel's Alarm Clock: 

Minette and Azor dispute Mr. Cockerel's paternal kiss as if rivals for a mouse).

La Journée du Célibataire (A Day in the Life of a Bachelor), a series of twelve lithographs by Honoré Daumier that originally appeared in Le Charivari between April 14 and September 15, 1839. (The pioneering days of early T.V.)

Plate Two. 8 HEURES DU MATIN. (Le ménage). Le spectacle de la nature
élève l'ame! M. Coquelet pour se délasser des soins du ménage, 
vient chercher à sa fenêtre le parfum des fleurs 
et le chant du.... serins. 

(Eight in the morning. ((Housekeeping). The spectacle of nature
elevates the soul! Mr. Cockerel relaxes in the household, 
just look at his window the scent of flowers 

and the song .... canaries.)

The series was soon published in black and white in a separate album offered for twelve Francs and in color for eighteen Francs. The album was printed by Chez Aubert and edited by print-seller  Chez Bauger, Paris, and advertised in Le Charivari on November 5, 1839.

Plate Three. Monsieur Coquelet resté célibataire par égoïsme partage 

son frugal déjeuner avec Azor et Minette. 

(Mr Cockerel remained in single selfishness, 

sharing his frugal lunch with Azor and Minette.)

There are no copies noted in OCLC or KVK. It is considered to be quite rare.

Plate Four. 10 HEURES DU MATIN. Mr. Coquelet ayant rencontré au jardin des 

Plantes Mlle Palissandre à laquelle il eût le bonheur d'offrir une rose 
pompon le 1er mai 1804, a obtenu un rendez vous, et s'etant mis en frais 
d'une paire de gantsa 29 sous, il jette un coup d'oeil à 
son miroir avant d'aller en bonne fortune. 

(Ten in the morning. Mr. Cockerel, having met Miss Rosewood at the 

Jardin des Plantes when he had the pleasure to offer a pink pompom 

on 1 May 1804, obtained an appointment, and takes pains to don a pair 

of gloves. He throws a glance in the mirror before going to good fortune.)

"Daumier is showing us the day and activities of a bachelor, in this case of Monsieur Coquelet. It starts with his waking up at seven in the morning and ends at 9 in the evening when he goes to bed...

Plate Five. 11 HEURES DU MATIN. Mr. Coquelet voulant offrir un bouquet 

de violette à Mlle. Palissandre, se reproche cette prodigalite: et lavant son 

mouchoir de ses propres mains, il rassure sa conscience au moyen de 

cette économie. 

(Eleven in the morning. Mr. Cockerel, wanting to offer a bunch of violets 

to Ms. Rosewood, blames himself for this extravagance and, washing his 

hands with his handkerchief,  he reassures his conscience through this economy.)

"Daumier had some experience with bachelorhood himself, since he married the seamstress Alexandrine Dassy only at the age of 31. In contrast to his fictitious personality, Monsieur Coquelet, he had however decided for marriage, while Coquelet lived a life of stinginess and loneliness, diligently avoiding any permanent relationship.

Plate Six. Sans doute Mr. Riflot le droit de pétition est sacré; mais on en abuse! 

témoin celle dont vous nous parlez: imposer les célibataires comme inutiles à 

la population ! j'en suis faché pour les gens mariés; mais s'il faut le dire il n'

en est aucun qui, plus que moi Coquelet, ait aidé à la population. 

(Doubtless Mr. Riflot, the right of petition is sacred, but it is abused! 

Witness what you mention: the unmarried as imposing unnecessarily 
to the population! I'm sorry for married people but none have done more than 
I, Cockerel, to keep the population down.)

"Daumier not only chastises the loneliness of his bachelor's existence but even more so his avarice and makes him appear ridiculous in his exaggerated affection for his pets, usually an over-fed dog, cat, canary or occasionally a plant on the window sill. With a somewhat melancholy smile, the reader recognizes these insufficient substitutes for real love and partnership and the waste led by a life diligently governed by a daily routine which starts at 7 in the morning and ends at 9 at night, leaving no room for personal deployment and deplores the waste of precious time" (Daumier Registry).

Plate Seven. UNE HEURE. Promenade au Luxembourg. Va gredin, 
avale z'en! tu verras ce que c'est que d'être jeté à l'eau 
par un p...p...p...pol...is...son comme toi!! 

(One in the afternoon. Walking in Luxembourg. Go Rogue, 
swallows mucha! You'll see what it's like to be thrown into the water 
by a p. .. p. .. p. .. pol ... is ... its like you!)

Plate Eight. 2 HEURES. Le gouter d'azor. Que voulez vous, mon cher: 

cette bête n'a que moi, vous, vous avez tout le monde. 

(Two in the afternoon. The taste of Azor. What do you want, my dear: 

this beast has only me; you, you have everybody.)

Plate Nine. TROIS HEURES. Monsieur Coquelet à la police correctionnelle, a

dmire cette institution qui met à l'abri des audacieuses entreprises d'êtres corrompus. 

(Three in the afternoon. Mr Cockerel, in the police court, admires 

the institution that protects from aggressive firms becoming corrupt).

Plate Ten. 5 HEURES DU SOIR. Mr. Coquelet vous êtes un être insociable: 

vous vous entendez avec votre chien; voila deux fois que j'en ai 149, 

il saute sur la table et il brouille tout. Votre chien est un compère!... 

et vous un vieux tricheur. 

(Five in the evening. Mr. Cockerel you're an unsociable being: 

you hear with your dog voila twice that I have 149, 

he jumps on the table and it confuses everything. Your dog is a gossip! ... 

and you an old cheater).

Plate eleven sees Coquelet at seven in the evening walking home. He meets a friend who tells him.... "A word! My dear, in all honor, a neighbor, 45 years, pleasant little widow, and the heart has nothing to do ....)." Coquelet keeps walking.

Plate twelve ends M. Coquelet's day at nine at night. "Mr. Cockerel extinguishes the light on a day that ends like the day before and  traces the exact picture of the single life!"

But, alas, M. Coquelet sleeps uneasily. His dreams take him to that dark place that awaits the old and alone, and, once secure in his prison of freedom, he is now experiencing a nightmare of loneliness and despair, no one to care for him, no one to love and be loved by. And, a single man has a lower life expectancy! Horreur! Terreur! Mon Dieu! Day breaks, and M. Coquelet understands the folly of his bachelor ways:

"I could have had Betty. I could have had Carole. 

Instead, I'm trapped in a ménage à trois from hell with me, myself, and I!

I made my bed and now I have to sleep in it, solitary in a fool's paradise!
Damn you to hell, Daumier! Damn you to hell!"

And so ends this episode of The Bachelor. 

•••

Next week on The Bachelor: Brad, a precocious lil' satyr from Covina, California, plays the Pan pipes to a bevy of fine lil' dogies culled from a recent cattle call.

 Eligible, buff, and stylish. Yet unemployed. Who'll be the lucky lady?

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DAUMIER, Honoré. La Journee du Celibataire. [Paris: Aubert & Cie, 1839].

First issue. Folio. Twelve  hand-colored lithograph plates, 13 5/8 x 10 7/16 in., (348 x 266 mm.), plate; 9 7/8 x 7 3/4 in. (250 x 197 mm.), image, heightened with gum arabic. Three edges gilt.

Daumier Registry 607-618.
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Daumier images courtesy of David Brass.
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Tea & Strumpets: When Dessert Leads To Heartburn

Beware oh fragile heart!

Let's hear it for madeleines.

No, not the tea cakes attributed to Madeleine Paulmier, the 18th century French cook whose precious  creation so impressed Louis XV that he named them after her. Rather, repentant women of easy virtue who then vex the men that once presumed their favors. It's a hoary theme.

Plate 8: Politesse (Politeness).

Not too long ago, I had pass through my hands a highly amusing collection of twenty hand-colored lithographs by French designer and caricaturist Cham (1819-1879) satirizing the varieties of the species of Les Madeleines. It is  exceedingly scarce with only one copy in OCLC and KVK, at Columbia University. There are no auction records. It appears to be unrecorded; I have found no references to it.

Plate 9: Une Scéne (A Scene).

Of Charles Amédée de Noé, ”known as Cham (that is, Ham, the son of Noah)…it was said that he had ‘an idea a day’ for Le Charivari. A good proportion of his thousands of lithographs were gathered into albums. His contributions to the Album du siège [Paris: Aux Bureaux du Charivarai, 1871)] in which Daumier was his collaborator, are typical of his work” (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 155-156).

Plate 13: "I detest masquerades, and you are in a terrible disguise..."

Whether French crumpet or strumpet, these madeleines are tasty.

Plate 4: Un Moment Difficile (A Difficult Moment).

But pity the fool who doesn't watch his diet. These guys are starving; things ain't what they used to be.
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The Plates:
1.  Un Ruse De Guerre.
2. Pour Qui Me Prenez Vous?…
3.  Oh! C'Te Tiete!…
4.  Un Moment Difficile.
5.  Voice Ce M'est Arivee.
6.  Encore Ta Fête?
7.  Un Gentil-Homme Artificiel.
8.  Politesse.
9.  Une Scéne.
10.  Générosité.
11. (Untitled)
12. (Untitled)
13. (Untitled)
14. (Untitled)
15. Une Connaissance.
16. (Untitled)
17. (Untitled)
18. Ton Grigou De Pére!…
19. Un Gage D'Amour.
20. Crrrré Chien!!…
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[CHAM, illustrator, pseud. of Charles Amédée de Noé]. Les Madeleines. Varieté de L'Espece Lorettes. Paris: Chez Aubert & Cie, [n.d., ca. 1847].

First edition (later issued ca. 1870s in a slightly smaller size). Large folio (13 1/4 x 9 3/4 in; 336 x 245 mm).  Hand-colored lithographed title and twenty hand-colored lithographed plates with captions and heightened with gum arabic, (12) pp. as Aubert catalog. Original quarter green cloth over lithographed boards.
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Images courtesy of David Brass.
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Deceit, Thy Name Is Woman! Woman, Thy Name Is Delilah!

 

 Hedy Lamarr as Delilah in Sampson and Delilah (1949). 

Booktryst readers on the distaff side who, based upon today's headline, have been called to arms will kindly refrain from launching a pitchfork offensive against your humble reporter. Be assured that fourberies - deceptions - were not exclusive to females in 1840 France, nor at any other time.

It's just that with Fourberies des Femmes, French caricaturist Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier aka Paul Gavarni completed the work of Daumier, whose Les Robert-Macaire (1839-1840) pretty much covered the waterfront regarding the deceptions and follies of men.
 

Daumier's Robert Macaire deceiving a lover by exploiting her love for him.

"When politics became a forbidden topic in Le Charivari, where Caricaturana [Les Robert-Macaire] first appeared, Daumier and [publisher Charles] Philipon turned to social satire. If they could not attack Louis Philippe directly, they could at least show the kind of society that flourished under his gross and venal regime. Taking the flamboyant and florid swindler Macaire from the character that Frédérick Lemaître had created in a hack melodrama called L’Auberge des adrets, they showed him and his inseparable companion, the dejected and meager Bertrand, ranging through all kinds of commercial enterprise, in the stock market, in the banks, in the courts, and in dozens of other public settings, never failing to find eager dupes. Macaire is equally persuasive in the encounters of private life, where no situation finds him at a loss for an appropriate flower of sentiment…" (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 234-236).

 

The old pretend-to-be-sleeping routine.

Yet Gavarni's deceptive women were neither venal, criminal frauds, nor full-blown viragoes. With charm and wit, he gently illustrated the psychology of women who deceive themselves as well as their lovers, a foible not exclusive to women.
 

Charles! Charles! Do not ogle me and therefore all women ... it's indecent!
(But of course she enjoys it).

 “In 1837 Gavarni began his connection with Le Charivari, which did not conclude until 1848. In all he drew 1054 lithographs for his journal…Most of these appeared in series, some twenty-five of which extend to ten or more plates, and were afterwards published by Aubert in albums. Perhaps the best of these collections are Fourberies de femmes en matière de sentiment...
 

Screwed again by feminine wiles.

 "...Baudelaire had this part of Gavarni’s work particularly in mind when he wrote…that ‘the true glory and the true mission of Gavarni and Daumier has been to complete Balzac.’ Certainly the pictures of Parisian society provided by the two artists perfectly complement each other. Daumier’s preoccupation was the working middle class with faces and figures heavily marked by life. Gavarni remained for the most part outside the humdrum bourgeois round. He preferred to show ‘youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm.’
 

 You are free! You are simple! Have confidence in yourself! 
You! You are you! You! 
But you are a brat just for the pleasure of deceiving!

 "His pretty girls and sleek young men are bent on enjoyment. They live lives of graceful dissipation, with love intrigues and balls on the one hand, and pawnbrokers’ shops and debtors’ prisons on the other. Their motto is carpe diem, and they rarely think of the day or reckoning” (Ray, p. 217).

 

 On receipt of this letter mount a horse and hurry! 

Looking on the Avenue de Neuilly a yellow awning drops,

gray horse, Weller - 108 - Lanturn one lighted. Follow! 

Stop at the door of Sablonville house, a man and a woman go down

- this man was my lover - And this woman is yours!

  

“After the initial success of Caricaturana, Philipon proposed to Gavarni that he draw ‘Mme. Robert Macaire’ for Le Charivari. He responded with twelve studies of female deception in which he seems to have adopted Vigny’s belief that ‘A woman, more or less, is always Delilah.’ 

 

Allow me, Clara! Allow me, Clara!!... 
It is I who am just a fool with my stupid things ... 

you can have your velvet shawl ... Allow me, Clara! Come!
(The "I'll just die w/o it" routine).

"They made little impression, but three years later Gavarni returned to the theme in a subtler and more amiable way with one of his most searching and amusing series. In no. 37 he offers this exchange: ‘How did you know, papa, that I loved Mr. Leon?—Because you always talked to me about Mr. Paul.’ Gavarni’s playful mastery of female psychology is not the only attraction of the series. If Daumier could not draw a pretty woman, as is sometimes alleged, Gavarni at this period could hardly draw an ugly one” (Ray, pp. 220-221).
 

 How did you know, papa, that I loved Mr. Leon?

— Because you always talked to me about Mr. Paul.

 It is safe to say that the Delilah of the Bible practiced deception to a degree far in excess of these innocents at worst coquettes.

The name Delilah is a play on the Hebrew word, Laylah, or "night." Gavarni's dainty Delilahs do not possess the dark charms of their biblical counterpart; they may be fairly characterized as sunshine Delilahs, vexing, perhaps, but not cruel vixens. They perpetrate misdemeanors, not felonies. They may drive their men to distraction but are not bringing them to their knees as this latter-day destroyer of men did:

Yet the Layla here is based upon Patti Boyd, Eric Clapton's unrequited love and wife of his best friend, Beatle George Harrison. She didn't deceive him; he deceived himself.

Cherchez la femme? Non, mon ami. Cherchez le imbécile, the man who allows himself to fall for and continue with the femme who deceives. Is it Lola's fault that Herr Rath is an idiot?

The Blue Angel (1930), based upon Heinrich Mann's novel,  

Professor Unrat (1905).

One of the most interesting characters/goddesses in the world of the Old Testament is mentioned only  by obscure, indirect Biblical references. The ancient cities of Anathoth and Beth Anath are, in their earliest roots, identified with Anath, the sister of Baal, and Canaanite  goddess of love and war, one of the more dramatic job combos in the pagan pantheon. Square that, Sigmund Freud.

Which brings us back to Hollywood goddess of love and war Hedy Lamarr, whose 1942 U.S. Patent 2,292,387 for a secret communications device based on frequency hopping to aid radio-guided torpedoes was  a technological breakthrough. Though contemporary mechanical technology was not able to realize the device's potential, it was used in 1962 during the Cuban Missile-blockade crisis.

The device had the power to deceive the enemy's radio signals and prevent jamming a torpedo's wireless path.

Hedy Lamarr, secret sunshine Delilah.
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GAVARNI [pseudonym of Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier]. Fourberies de femmes. Paris: Chez Aubert gal. Véro-Dodat, [n.d., 1837]. [Together with:] Fourberies de femmes en matière de sentiment. 2e. série. Paris: Chez Bauger [and] Chez Bauger & Cie., [n.d., 1840-1841].

Two large quarto volumes bound in one. A total of sixty-four hand-colored lithographed plates, heightened with gum arabic, including twelve in the first series and fifty-two in the second.

Contemporary vertical-ribbed purple cloth, lettered in gilt on front cover.

Armelhault & Bocher 662-702; 1728-1739. Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 150 and 151.
 

[DAUMIER, Honoré, illustrator]. Les Cent et un Robert-Macaire, composés et dessinés par M. H. Daumier, sur les idées et les légendes de M. Ch. Philipon, réduits et lithographiés par MM. ***; texte par MM Maurice Alhoy et Louis Huart. Paris: Chez Aubert et Cie, Éditeurs du Musée pour Rire, 1840 and 1839.

Two quarto volumes. [8], [200], [4, publisher’s advertisements]; [8], [204], [4, publisher’s advertisements] pp. With 101 hand-colored lithographed plates, heightened with gum arabic.
   

Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 162. Vicaire III, cols. 31-32 (under Alhoy) and V, cols. 572-573 (under Philipon).     

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Images courtesy of David Brass.
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Of related interest:

Femme Fatales Go Down Under.   
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