Gavarni's Paris Mornings and Mailbox (1839)

by Stephen J. Gertz

Two incredibly scarce  albums from 1839 by Paul Gavarni, bound together, and with a total of forty-three marvelous hand-colored lithographs, recently came to market. This two-albums-in-one set sold immediately for $7,500.

The albums, Paris le Matin (Paris Morning) and La Boite aux Lettres (Mailbox), are typical - if exceedingly scarce - examples of Gavarni turning his satiric eye on the customs and manners of the French petit bourgeoisie.

Paris le Matin limns the morning activities of  Parisians; La Boite aux Lettres is a charmingly amusing survey of writing, sending, and receiving letters in Paris of the era.

The American Book Prices Current (ABPC) Index, 1923-present, records no copies of Paris le Matin at auction within the last eighty-eight years. Only one copy of La Boite ux Lettres has come to auction within the last thirty-six years but it contained only fourteen thirty-four called-for plates.

Only one copy of Paris le Matin is found in institutional collections worldwide, at the Getty Research Library, but it contains only five of the twelve plates in the series. OCLC records only five copies of La Boite aux Lettres in libraries throughout the world.

This copy of La Boite aux Lettres lacks the last three plates,  XXXI, XXXIII, and XXXIV. 

The institutional copies, however, appear to be incomplete, as well, and it seems that the copy under notice is as complete as has ever been seen within our lifetime and is likely remain so for many years to come.

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GAVARNI, Paul [pseudonym of Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier]. Paris le Matin. Paris: Chez Aubert, 1838-1839.  [bound with] La Boite aux Lettres. Paris: Caboche Gregoire / Chez Aubert, 1839.

First editions. Folio (13 1/8 x 9 5/8 in; 334 x 245 mm). Paris le Matin with twelve, and La Boite aux Lettres with thirty-one (of thirty-four) hand-colored lithographed plates; a total of forty-three plates, most heightened with gum arabic.

Armelhault & Bocher 902-913 (Paris le Matin). Armelhault & Bocher, p. 88 (La Boite aux Lettres, one unnumbered + 348-397).

How Did Hand-Colorists in the Past Know What Colors To Use?

Andalouse

This past Tuesday, our friend L.D. Mitchell at The Private Library, discussed Hand-Colored Plates, paying particular attention to the assembly-line process required to manually color engravings or lithographs. The workers were, more often than not, anonymous women or children. The designers and engraver/lithographers did not color the plates themselves.

But these anonymous colorists were not left alone to improvise a palette, each of their own creation; they required  a color scheme for reference. And these were not Venus Paradise Coloring Sets with numbers on the plate corresponding to a specific colored pencil. It was left to the original artist/designer or a primary colorist to create models for the workers to use as guides.

One such colorist/modeler was Edouard Bouvenne, an artist in his own right yet of whom little is known; he is not found in Benezit (now, thankfully, available in an English edition). But he often provided models for colorists employed by Chez Aubert and Chez Bauger, two of the leading publisher-printmakers in France, 1820-1845. Bouvenne was a "figure of considerable talent who was able to give strong coloration to certain of Daumier’s  [and Gavarni's] prints" (Fogle, Sabina. Daumier. L'écriture du lithographe. In Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, Volume 7, Issue 2, Autumn 2008).

Pétrin

Original models for hand-colored plates rarely survived their function; they were heavily used.  From time to time, however, vintage hand-coloring models do surface and two years ago I had a set of them for Gavarni's Souvenirs du Bal Chicard pass through my hands, created by Bouvenne.

Second only to Daumier as the greatest social commentator and satirical artist of nineteenth century France, Gavarni produced the work under notice during his first period whence he confined himself to the study of Parisian manners, particularly those of the city's youth. Souvenirs du Bal Chicard (Memories of the Chicard Ball) dates from when he was in charge of the journal Le Charivari and was a regular at Paris's most prestigious balls, for which he often designed many costumes. During this time many of his finest lithographic sets drew their subject matter from these costume balls including Souvenirs du Bal Chicard.

Cacique

“Costume balls had been a part of carnival celebrations in France since the fifteenth century, but their popularity was unprecedented during the period of the July Monarchy. At first private and aristocratic, they became increasingly popular among the new bourgeoisie and the aspiring lower classes when they could afford them. One of the more exclusive, expensive (fifteen francs), and licentious of these bal masqués was also one of the most popular. The Bal Chicard was given by a prosperous businessman, Alexandre Lévêque, who was called by the nickname Chicard. Gavarni was a friend of Chicard’s, and, as a result, was one of those regularly in attendance. In this image [“Chicard”], from Souvenirs du Bal Chicard, a series of twenty lithographs published in Le Charivari between 1839 and 1843, we see one of the parodies of the earlier historic costumes of the bal masqué made famous at the Bal Chichard, along with some wilder forms of dancing...

Général Étranger

"...In another image [“Troubadour”] from the same series…Gavarni depicts an uninhibited dancer whose cap rests temporarily on the bottle of wine on the floor behind him. Gavarni’s intention here has obviously been to capture the character of the wild dancing for which the Bal Chicard was noted. In a pentimento, he has disguised a previously drawn extended arm by incorporating it into the drapery that flies off at the left, but it remains easy to visualize the figure with three arms. Gavarni not only drew the costumes he saw at the balls, but also designed costumes for use there. This troubadour’s costume purports to be a version of the late medieval doublet and hose, with anachronistic modifications frequently seen at the Bal Chicard, here emphasized by the pipe in the reveler’s mouth” (Beatrice Farwell, The Charged Image: French Lithographic Caricature 1816-1848, p. 86, 88).

Without Edouard Bouvenne's exquisite color models as a guide to assist the hand-colorists in bringing Gavarni's plates to life, who knows how these gorgeous plates would have turned out?
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GAVARNI [pseudonym of Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier]. Souvenirs du Bal Chicard. [Paris: Bauger & Cie., n.d., 1839-1843].

A unique copy comprised of colorist Edouard Bouvenne's models. Large quarto (13 1/2 x 10 1/2 in; 341 x 266 mm). A suite of twenty hand colored lithographs representing the travesties of men and women, commissioned for Le Charivari. Printed by Aubert et Cie. All plates mounted on stubs.

Fourteen plates have "Modele" stenciled in color at foot; five have "Modele" inked in Bouvenne's hand and Bouvenne has boldly signed and dated thirteen plates; only the first plate is unmarked by Bouvenne in any way.

The plates: 1) Chicard. 2) Un Covage Civilizé. 3) Balochard. 4) Mr. Floumann. 5) Pétrin. 6) Commissaire de Marine. 7) Général Étranger. 8) Insulaire de n’importe où. 9) Troubadour. 10) Titi. 11) Agréable. 12) Cacique. 13) Emir. 14) Andalouse. 15) Triton. 16) Garde Champêtre. 7) Bourguemestre. 18) Robinson. 19) Minon-Minard 20) Pistolet.

Armelhaut and Boucher, L’Oeuvre de Gavarni, pp. 253, 524, and nos. 257 (“Chicard”) and 2280 (“Troubadour”). __________

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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