You Are The Objects Of Your Trade: Personification Prints

by Stephen j. Gertz

George Spratt and George E. Madeley, China.

You are what you eat, you are what you do.

In 1830 - 1833, George Spratt, an English artist, and George E. Madeley, an English engraver and printmaker, produced a series of lithographed satiric designs of tradesmen composed of the objects of their profession. They were published by Charles Tilt, a London book and print seller.

"China," is found in Purcell's Lithographic Drawing Book, published by Tilt in 1831. It depicts a man smoking a pipe, his body a collection of plates, containers, dishes, bowls, cups, saucers, and vases, with his hand as a teapot.

Spratt and Madeley, Crockery.

"Crockery," which pictures a woman made up of jugs, ewers, plates, teapot, and sauce boats, is also from Purcell's Lithographic Drawing Book.

The "Fruiterer" appears in Spratt and Madeley's Figures of Fun (1833). Here, a woman is depicted as a collection of grapes, melons, lemon, plums, cherries and strawberries.

Spratt and Madeley, The Fruiterer.

Each print is extremely rare, taken from books that have become excessively scare in all likelihood because they were broken up early on to individually sell the plates. Not a trace of Purcell's Lithographic Drawing Book is to be found in any library worldwide, nor is it recorded in any of the standard or unusual references. The only evidence for its existence is publisher Charles Tilt's advertisement for the book at the rear of Landscape Illustrations of the Waverly Novels (London 1831).

Of Figures of Fun, only a handful of copies have been accounted for, nearly all incomplete. Gumulchain, in the only reference that we have found for the book, describes it as "so rare that this is the only complete copy... that has come to our notice. The work is inspired by 17th century French engravings done in the same spirit."

Arcimboldo, The Librarian.

Yet in the sixteenth century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) represented the human form with inanimate objects, some of which included tradesmen.

L'Armessin, Habit de Paticier (Dress of the confectioner).

In 1695, designer and engraver Nicolas de L'Armessin II's (1638-1694) Costumes Grotesques was published. A series of fantastic plates in which workers and professionals were depicted with the tools and objects of their trade as body parts, it is the work that Gumulchain refers to.

Martin Englebrecht, Un Chapetier (A Hatter).

In 1730 Martin Engelbrecht published Assemblage nouveau des manouvries habilles, a series of dessins humoristiques prints inspired by l'Armessin's.

And so with Spratt and Madeley we have England's answer to those earlier examples, all collectively known as "personification prints": the objects of trade assembled to create a personification of the trade. George Spratt and George E. Madeley had, earlier, in 1830, produced  prints in this genre, i.e. The Itinerant Apothecary. 

Spratt and Madeley, The Itinerant Apothecary.

 Medeley was a British artist and lithographer active 1826-1854.  Spratt was a British illustrator and surgeon-accoucheur (male midwife), active as an artist 1830-1833, whose Obstetrical Tables (1830) was noteworthy for his use of multiple super-imposed sheets of paper to create a anatomical pop-up effect not unlike that used by Vesalius in 1538.

Publisher Charles Tilt (1797-1861), active 1826-1840, was an English bookseller who appears to have specialized in publishing satiric and humorous prints. He issued the satiric caricatures of Henry Heath, and co-published Le Pointevin's classic, Les Diables de Lithographies (1832).

The Spratt and Madeley prints are not unusual to find as modern glicé prints. They are quite scarce, however, in their original lithographic form.

__________

[SPRATT. G, artist]. Three Hand-Colored Personification Plates. From Purcell's Lithographic Drawing Book: "Crockery," and "China;" and from Figures of Fun: "Fruiterer." London: Charles Tilt, 1831 / 1833. Designed by George Spratt and printed by George E. Madeley.

__________

Spratt images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

__________
__________

A Grand Rip-Off Of Grandville's Metamophoses Du Jour

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1828-29, J.J. Grandville, (1803-1847), one of the most celebrated caricaturists of his era, published Les Metamorphoses du jour, a satire of the French bourgeoisie in which he depicted humans whose character was revealed by possessing the heads of beasts, with satiric captions to each lithographed plate. Extremely popular in its initial issue, it is amongst the rarest of all color-plate books.

It was so popular that within a very short time afterward two imitation editions were released by competing publishers in 1828, both designed by the same anonymous artist, Hippolyte Jean-Baptiste Garnerey. One of them, La Métempsycose réalisée (The Mental Metamorphoses Realized), recently passed through my hands.

La Métempsycose réalisée, containing twenty hand-colored lithographed plates, is even rarer than Les Metamorphoses du jour. Exceptionally scarce, with no copies recorded by OCLC/KVK in institutional holdings worldwide  and none at auction, according to ABPC, since at least 1928, it appears that most copies were broken up at an early date to individually sell the lithographs. Generally unknown and scarcely seen, these plates make their Internet (and likely everywhere else) debut on Booktryst.

Garnerey's second album of Grandville imitations is the equally scarce La Petite ménagerie (Paris, Piaget, s.d. [1828-1829]). Grandville bitterly complained about both the albums; they were so obviously and blatantly copycats of his work, down to Garnerey signing only his initial, "G," to some of the plates, which only added to the confusion and what was surely an effort by the publishers (Brussels: Chez Daems / Paris: Chez Méant) meant to deceive the public.

"Les Métamorphoses du jour ont, des leur apparition, provoqué de la part d'autres artistes des imitations, dont Grandville ne manqua pas de se plaindre. V. la planche 33 du recueil de 1829 qui porte cette légende: Il est assez de geais à  deux pieds comme lui... Grandville y fait allusion aux deux albums que publiait, ds 1828, Hippolyte Garnerey et qui sont les suivants: 1 La Metamorphoses réalisée, 20 planches lthographiées; les unes signées G..., la plupart non signées; les 10 premières planches portent l'adresse sivante: A Bruxelles chez Daems et à Oaris chez Meant fils, rue St-Antoine, no. 9. les pl. 11 à 20: A Paris,  chez Genty, éditeur, rue St-Jacques, no. 22 [1828-1829]" (Vicaire).

Little is known about Hippolyte Jean-Baptiste Garnerey (1787-1858) beyond that he was a French watercolor painter, engraver, and lithographer who debuted at the Salon in 1831. 

Grandville established the anthropomorphic human menagerie genre of caricature; Garnerey reinforced it.  In 1851, artist Amédée Varin (1818-1883) further explored the genre with L'Empire des Légumes aka Drôleries végétales; people as vegetables. The following year Varin illustrated Les Papillons Métamorphoses Terrestres des Peuples de l'Air; people as butterflies. These were not, however,  satires; Varin was a fantasist. 

Of Grandville's Les Metamorphoses du jour, Gordon N. Ray, whose The Art of the Illustrated Book In France 1700-1914 is the key reference, wrote, "This famous album, which established Grandville's early stye of bitter burlesque, has become rare. Indeed, it is known to many of his admirers only through the greatly inferior album of seventy wood-engraved reproductions published by Harvard in 1854… Lust, gluttony, anger, and the other deadly sins are stigmatized, now with the blow of a hammer, now with the thrust of a stiletto; while the foibles and humors of mankind also receive due attention. Throughout the series Grandville's choice of beast-heads is inspired; and the force of his conceptions and the wit of his captions rarely falter. Occasionally, he produces a design of universal application that calls Goya to mind, as in the bat and owl creatures bewildered by the sunshine of 'The light that hurts them' (no. 12). Perhaps his most terrifying plate is 'Ménagerie (no. 67), which shows four prison cells. In the first are complacent commercial offenders, enjoying all the comforts of home; in the second violent criminals, sly or stupid; in the third murderers, one with a countenance of the utmost ferocity; in the forth, political prisoners, quiet and despondent…Granville turned to direct political satire in his final plates, but the publication of his onslaughts on church ('Famille des scarabées' no. 72) and state ('Une bête féroce,' no. 73) was not permitted in France" (Ray).

The difference in artistic execution between Grandville and Garnerey is slim; Garnerey was a master imitator. What distinguishes the two are the captions. Grandville was sharp and had bite; Garnerey, while not completely dull, could have used a whet-stone to hone his captions to a finer edge. Yet his captions possess a pleasant charm and the Bibliothéque National possesses a copy of Grandville bound with the two Garnereys; companion pieces in counterpoint,

__________

[GARNEREY, Hippolyte Jean-Baptiste]. La Métempsycose réalisée. Brussels: Chez Daems / Paris: Chez Méant, 1828.

First edition. Oblong folio (9 7/8 x 13 7/8 ini; 250 x 352 mm). Twenty hand-colored stub-mounted lithographed plates in the style of Granville's Les Métamorphoses du jour. Lithography by Gobert et Cie. 

Vicaire V, col. 788.

__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

__________
__________ 

A Bookbinding Workshop In 1840

by Stephen J. Gertz

This busy image of a nineteenth century bookbinding workshop c. 1840 is one of thirty hand-colored lithographed plates depicting twenty-nine trades and professions issued in 30 Werkstätten von Handwerkern by Jacob Ferdinand Schreiber, a leading German publisher of children's books.

Originally published c. 1840, this, the 1844 second edition, was greatly expanded from the first, which only contained twelve plates. Included here are views of potters; sculptors and masons; farriers; nailsmiths; locksmiths; coppersmiths; plumbers; cutlers; tinsmiths; bell founders; blacksmiths; gold and silver smiths; carpenters; coopers; turners; butchers; bakers; ropers; soap makers; tanners; shoemakers; saddlers; brush makers; drapers; tailors; milliners; weavers; and, in Booktryst propinquity, bookbinders. 

Each unsigned plate features a central image of craftsmen at work bordered with the primary tools of their trade.

The book - highly sought-after and rare with OCLC recording only nine copies in institutional holdings worldwide - is complete with an accompanying sixteen-page text booklet that is often lacking when copies find their way into the marketplace. But, according to ABPC, no copies have come to auction within the last twenty-eight years.

A copy, however, recently found its way into - and immediately out of -  circulation. It sold for $16,500.

__________

SCHREIBER, J.F. 30 Werkstätten von Handwerkern. Nebst ihren hauptsächlichsten Werkzeugen und Fabrikaten. Mit erklärenden Text. Zweite Auflage. Esslingen am Neckar: J.F. Schreiber, 1844. Second edition. Oblong folio (335 x 425 mm). Lithographed title page, thirty hand-colored lithographed plates. 16 pp text booklet inserted.

__________

Image courtesy of Antiquariaat Forum, with our thanks.

__________
__________

How To Dance The Tarantella, In Scarce Lithographs (Cue The Godfather Theme)

By Stephen J. Gertz

Poor  "Frankie Five Angels" Pentangeli. He schleps all the way from New York to the Corleone estate in Nevada for little Anthony's Communion celebration and is offered a "can o' peas," i.e. Ritz crackers with chopped liver. He wants the Rosato brothers dead; Michael Corleone tells him to baciarmi culo e affancul. 

As if things could not get any worse, it's an Italian party and the band doesn't know the diff between a tarantella and Pop Goes the Weasel. É un incubo! A nightmare! I mean, everybody knows Zooma Zooma. It's like the national anthem.  It comes automatic with a slice of pizza. Wha's a matta wich you? C'mon now, sing d'song!

C'e' la luna mezza 'o mare
Mamma mia m'ho maritari
Figlia mia a cu t' ho dare
Mamma mia pensaci tu
S'iddu nun e' lu musicante
Iddu vai, iddu vene
Sempe lu strumento a mano tene
Se ci piglia 'a fantasia
Lu strumento figlia mia


Oh, mamma zooma zooma baccala'
Oh, mamma zooma zooma baccala'
Oh, mamma zooma zooma baccala'
Zooma zooma, zooma zooma
Zooma baccala'

If  Pentangeli had a copy of Gaetano Dura's Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine (c. 1834) with him on that fateful day a travesty could have been avoided. It illustrates how to perform the tarantella in eighteen beautifully hand-colored lithographed plates as a fold-out panorama, with captions. As a bonus for bandleaders who haven't a clue, another plate contains the music of a typical tarantella in its traditional rhythm, triplets in 6/8.

"[Of note in] the trend of  illustrating  Neapolitan folklore... is  the lithographic album titled Tarantella. Neapolitan Dance, drawn entirely by Dura [1805-1878], published in Naples in 1833, and lithographed by Gatti in 1834 [as Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine].

"Dura's [Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine], a very important document for the reconstruction of the Neapolitan tarantella, presents nineteen plates, accompanied by captions that explain, step by step, all the different phases of the dance.

"The style of the illustrations is  basic:  two dancers, drawn not without a certain grace and accuracy, move isolated on a white background completely devoid of any decoration or pittoresco.

"In the mid-1830s Dura became associated with Gatti, founding a lithographic establishment that soon became one of the most important in Naples. The brand of "Gatti and Dura"  published prints, calendars, atlases, graphic novels and works of a popular nature, such as almanacs and miscellanies"  (Encyclopedia Treccani.it, L'Enciclopedia Italiana).

This is an extremely rare book. ABPC records only one complete copy at auction since 1923; an incomplete copy with only ten plates was sold in 1955. OCLC/KVK note only three institutional copies, at Harvard, NYPL, and Austria State Library.

Poor Frankie Five Angels. If he'd known that not too far away,  in '50s Las Vegas, an Über-Guido was bompin' 'n stompin', working The Strip like crazy,  in the process becoming an Italian-American royal mixing classic tarantella, American pop, and jazz into a zesty zuppe de verdure, Frankie would have had Willy Cicci escort the man back to Casa de Corleone for a command performance of real, honest to goodness tarantella. Instead, he later slit his wrists.

Below, after paying tarantella tribute to Angelina, the girl who serves spumoni (and is ripe for matrimony), Il Re di Las Vegas, backed by Sam Butera and The Witnesses, sings Zooma Zooma better than anybody since Mama Corleone at Connie's wedding back in August '45, in the good old days, before, you know...



__________

DURA, Gaetano. Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine dirigée par Louis Puccinelli Maitre de Danse dessinée par Gaetan Dura. Naples: Gatti et Dura, n.d. [c. 1834].

First edition. Oblong octavo (5 7/16 x 7 1/8 in; 138 x181 mm). Hand-colored lithographed frontispiece, engraved title, one plate of music notation, and seventeen hand-colored lithographed plates with captions, a total of twenty panels in panorama format unfolding to 142 1/2 inches.

Cf. Colas 921.
__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________

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.

__________

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).

Alfred Dreyfus, Anti-Semitism, and the Museum of Horrors

by Stephen J. Gertz

No. 6. Le Traitor. Dreyfus as a hydra-head dragon.

Alfred Dreyfus  (1859 – 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish faith whose trial in 1894 on charges of treason for which he had been framed became one of the most tense political dramas in modern French and European history. Convicted of the false charge, he was sent to the French penal colony at Devil's Island in French Guiana to serve a life sentence in solitary confinement.

Beginning in the Fall of 1899 immediately after Dreyfus’ re-trial at Rennes and at the opening of the Paris World’s Fair, a series of scurrilous, blatantly anti-Semitic posters was issued by Gérant, publishers in Paris, The hand-colored lithographs were created by an artist working under the pseudonym V. Lenepveu. They were eventually confiscated by the police, who also stopped their production. 

No. 49. Le Casserole de Fontainebleau.
Alfred Dreyfus as a rabbit about to be stewed.

A total of fifty-one of these hand-colored lithographed broadsides ridiculing  Dreyfus and his statesmen, businessmen, journalist, and Jewish leader supporters  ("Dreyfusards") were issued under the general title, Musée des Horreurs (Freak Show).

No. 45. Le Baron Alphonse.
Baron Alphonse James de Rothschild, eldest son of James.

The broadsides dramatically illustrate the increasingly hostile debate throughout the Dreyfus Affair. “Means were dirtier and more violent even than today. The clash of principles degenerated into the sort of brawl that follows a good wake. The tone of debate was inconceivably virulent: scurrilous, personal, and mostly directed below the belt" (Kleeblatt, N. The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice, Berkeley, 1987, p. xxvi).

Of all the posters that the affair engendered the present series “was perhaps the most ambitious... Lenepveu succeeded in these visual character assassinations by attaching peculiar animal bodies to naturalistically rendered faces” (ibid. p. 298). 

No. 44. Le Baron James.
Baron James de Rothschild.

"The flood of press, poster and postcard caricatures stigmatising the ‘Jewish Republic,’ notably during the Panama Canal scandal, continued throughout the [Dreyfus] Affair, reaching hitherto unequaled heights of virulence, especially in 1898 and 1899. If anti-Semitism can exist without imagery, those who wanted to whip up public opinion against the Jews systematically used a visual vocabulary inspired by both traditional anti-Semitic and anticlerical imagery. Anonymous or famous caricaturists such as Willette, Caran d’Ache, Forain, Orens and Le Petit tried to outdo one another in their attacks on Alfred Dreyfus, the Jews, [Émile] Zola and the Dreyfusards. The sheer number, colours, obscenity and cruelty of their depictions in La Libre Parole, La Croix, Le Pilori, L’Antijuif, Psst…! and Le Musée des Horreurs had overwhelmingly more impact than the Dreyfusard caricatures [of those in the anti-Dreyfus camp]" (Alfred Dreyfus, Le combat pour la justice).

No. 43. Karl Mayer le Contrabandier.
Karl Mayer-Rothschild.

"With the Jews, the Musée des Horreurs, the Freak Show, has a field day. If the 'freaks' such as Zola, Labori or Picquart are drawn by simply adding their recognizable faces on the body of an animal, the facial features of the Jews are all caricatural...

"Look...at the faces of the Baron Alphonse de Rothschild as a one-eyed octopus, and his sons, Philippe de Rothschild, Edouard de Rothschild, and Karl Mayer-Rothschild: the caricatures here are grotesquely distorting their faces in order not simply to mock them... but also to demonize them.

"This is when one can see how slowly, but surely, a botched spy case dragged part of the French public opinion into the most disgusting fanaticism. The need for the caricature to be elliptic, keeping the decoding easy and funny, leads to the dangers of sensationalism by exaggerating attitudes and deforming nuances. The goal was to invite a gut reaction from the man in the street. The mob was the ultimate target. But the mob, indeed, often answered the call for action.

"These often tasteless and outrageous documents are indeed part of the collective memory which transcended a judicial error into a test for the French Republic and a symbol for the fight for basic human rights" (Jean-Max Guieu, Professor of French, Georgetown University, Bibliographer Emeritus, Lorraine Beitler Collection of the Dreyfus Affair, University of Pennsylvania. Video interview transcription).

No, 43. Charlotte Mayer.
French painter and socialite. Charlotte Mayer né Charlotte de Rothschild,
was the daughter of Baron James de Rothschild.

Dreyfus's re-trial in 1899 led to  re-conviction and dishonorable discharge from the French army. The trial was another sham but in 1906 he was completely exonerated of all charges and reinstated into the army when the complete story of his framing by jealous officers and dubious initial investigation came out during a subsequent, unbiased inquiry. He served as an officer in WWI.

Complete sets of these lithographs are extremely difficult to come by. A fine collection of nineteen of the original fifty-one has recently, however, come into the marketplace.

__________

LENEPVEU, V. (pseud.). Musée des Horreurs [Freak Show]. Paris: Impr. Gérant: Lenepveu, 58, rue Dulong..., 1899-1900. First issue. Fifty-one hand-colored lithographed broadsides, each 50 x 65 cm.

__________

Images courtesy of Davar Antiquarian Books, currently offering these rare lithographed posters, with our thanks. For inquiries, contact Davar's proprietor,  Ari Grossman, here.

__________
__________

The Gentle Art of Regurgitation During Travel by Coach, 1826

by Stephen J. Gertz

Inconveniences No. 5
Cruels effets d'une digestion interrompue
(The Cruel Effects of Interrupted Digestion).

Travel prior to rail was a harsh and rigorous affair. Rough, unpaved roads. and coaches with poor shock-absorbing suspensions rattled the bones and brought ache to the marrow. Highwaymen, accidents often serious, roadside repairs, casual arrival and departure times, poor food and shelter at roadside inns, and forget about restroom stops, were only a few of the manifold indignities to be endured. So uncomfortable and often painful was it that in the Marquis de Sade's novel, Juliette, the worldly sister of the hapless and hopelessly innocent Justine doses herself with laudanum (tincture of opium) as a matter of course when traveling long distances by coach.

And, yes, the prospect of motion sickness, mal de mer sur la terre (landside upchuck) was always a threat.

The inconvenient rigors of travel by coach were illustrated in a suite of twelve highly amusing plates by Xavier Leprince titled Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence (1826), an extremely rare color-plate book.

Plate No. 5 presents an amusing, if cautionary, piece de l'emesis vue de la nausée as a coach speeds along, causing the damsel riding atop it to hurl her cookies, which carom off a passenger's head and into a roadside beggar's chapeau, a hat-trick not envisioned by any magician before or since, nor a an undigested bank-shot by Minnesota Fats.

Auguste-Xavier Leprince (1799-1826), French painter and lithographer, "was the son and pupil of the painter and lithographer Anne-Pierre Leprince and the elder brother of the painters Robert-Leopold Leprince (1800-47) and Gustave Leprince (1810-37). Leprince received a medal at his first Salon of 1819 for one of six entries, five of which were landscapes of 17th century Dutch inspiration, which came possibly via the work of Jean-Louis Demarne. Leprince quickly learned to vary the contents of his paintings: at the Salon of 1822 his entries included three Paris street scenes, three portraits, and two scenes on board a frigate. His numerous Paris street scenes usually depicted some well-known contemporary event...In the last year of his short life Leprince showed himself to be a sensitive watercolour painter and lithographer, publishing a set of twelve lithographs entitled Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence" (Grove Dictionary of Art).

Indeed, bringing up the belly has rarely been so sensitively, artfully, and amusingly depicted. Heave-ha.
__________

LEPRINCE, Xavier. Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence. Douze Tableaux, Lithographiés par... Paris: Chez Gihaut Freres... et Sazerac et Duval, 1826.

First edition. Oblong folio. Plate size: 14 5/8 x 11 inches (371 x 279 mm.) Wrapper size: 16 7/8 x 11 3/8 inches (429 x 288 mm.) Twelve hand-colored lithographed plates. Lithography by Englemann. Original tan wrappers printed in black.

Lipperheide 3658.
__________

Image courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________

A Hand-Colored Lazy-Boy Recliner in Paris, 1828

by Stephen J. Gertz

CAPRICES No. 2. FONTALLARD, Henri-Gérard. Un jeune homme très aimable.
A Paris chez Hautcoeur Martinet, rue de Coq, no 15. Lith du Ducarme.
No date [1828].

Captions to French caricature rarely get more sarcastically ironic than that which describes Caprices #2, an undated lithograph by Henri-Gérard Fontallard published, according to La Bibliographie de la France, in 1828.

"Un jeune homme trés aimable" strictly translates to "An amiable young man," but to capture the true sense and spirit of the scene the caption broadly translates as, "Rude, louche, lazy bum acts like he owns the joint he's parked his carcass in and will take umbrage if you dare ask him to behave like a gentleman and get his feet off the chair and sit up straight. A snooze after liquid lunch, yes,  but what does he think this is, his own private sitting room?"

Any more relaxed and you could pour cream sauce over the guy and call him fettuccine Alfredo; this dolce far niete has gone too far. The lithograph might just as well have been captioned: Un Valium dans l'aprés-midi, a siesta courtesy Mickey Finn.

Henri-Gerard Fontallard (or Gérard-Fontallard) was born in Paris c. 1798, the son of the painter and miniaturist Jean-François Gerard and nephew of the painter Camille Fontallard.  He worked for La Silhouette 1829-1830. Raoul Deberdt wrote that Fontallard "displayed the inexhaustible verve of a comedian to parody the doings of his time" (La Caricature et L'Humour Francais au XIXieme siecle, p. 160).

__________
__________

A Rare Suite of Pre-Political Lithographs by Charles Philipon Surfaces

by Stephen J. Gertz

Plate 9. Action du feu sur les corps gras. Gladiateur champêtre.
Gentillesse enfantine. Symptomes de coliques.
Monter est un; bien, monter est autre. Un troubadour.
(Action of fire on the fat. Gladiator country.
Childlike friendliness. Symptoms of colic.
Fit is, well, up next. A troubadour.).

Before Charles Philipon became France's dominant publisher of (and collaborator on) lithographs by the great caricaturists - Grandville, Monnier, Daumier, Traviés, Gavarni, Pigal, etc. - for his magazines, La Silhouette, La Caricature, and Le Charivari, and was, through La Caricature, the pre-eminent  political satirist of his era, a Republican at war, 1830-1835, with the monarchy of Louis Philippe I, he was a designer and lithographer in his own right.

Plate 8. Le baume d'acier. Mépris philosophique. Jouissances de l'esprit...de vin.
Pauvre pigeon! Quel goujon!
(The balm of steel. Philosophical contempt. Pleasures of the mind ... of wine.
Poor pigeon! What a stud!).

Lithographic art work solely by Philipon (he began in 1824) almost wholly ceases by 1830. Given his later insistent and stinging political commentary through La Caricature, it is somewhat of a surprise that there is not a trace of politics in his early work, which was not at all technically distinguished.

Plate 7. Petit embarras. Cas de concience.  Des gens rassasiés.
Le laid idéal. Fructus belle. Le toutou de ma Grande-mire.
Il achettera.
(A little embarrassment. A case of concience. People filled.
The ugly ideal. Fructus beautiful. The dog of my Great sight.
He will buy.).

Yet "Philipon's fertile imagination partly compensated for his clumsy draughtsmanship, and he found regular employment easily enough as a lithographic artist...The bulk of his production was of a gently erotic nature, anodyne sketches of of the public and private lives of Parisian grisettes" (Kerr, Caricature and French Political Culture 1830-1835, p. 8).

Plate 6. Un invalide. Oh! Oh! Le voisin!!! L'age, l'art et la nature.
L'embarras du choix. Le dos, les jambes et le nez aquilins.
Faire la montre, faire le mouchoir.
(An invalid. Oh! Oh! The neighbor! The age, art and nature.
Spoiled for choice. The back, legs and aquiline nose.
Watch the handkerchief).

Beyond tracing the lives and amours of grisettes (French working-class women), he contributed, for instance, at least nine plates to Album pour Rire (Laugh Album), a now scarce series of lithographs printed by Ducarme and sold through chez Ostervald, a Parisian print shop, that softly poke fun at Parisian manners, customs, and the petit bourgeoisie. Though undated, they were, according to the Bibliographie de la France, published in 1828.

Plate 5. Ce qu'on appele piler du poivre. Ces messieurs vont voir la mer.
Physionomies patibulaires. Braconnier Parisien.
(The so-called crush pepper. These gentlemen will see the sea.
 Physionomies gallows. Parisian Poacher.).

Each plate by Philipon contains three to six vignettes of only fair quality of execution. What sets them apart is the idea for each and their humorous captions. These were Philipon's true gifts.

Plate 4. Un martyr de la chasse. Allons! du sang-froid.
Incompatibilité d'humeur. (A martyr of the hunt. Come on! coolness.
Irreconcilable differences.).

What he lacked in artistic talent he made up for as a great idea man with  a facility  for composing witty text to accompany his lithographs that would prove to be valuable assets when he, aware of his limitations but with a keen eye for talent, put aside his career to closely supervise and collaborate with the artists he later hired to provide lithographs for his magazines.

Plate 3. Mon dieu! J'ai retrouvé ma bourse. Un enfant de choeur.
Gestes du mauvaise société. Satisfaction mélée d'impatience.
Il a appres tout seul!
(My god! I found my purse. An altar boy. Actions of bad company.
Satisfaction mixed with impatience. It was only after all!).

The plates for Album pour Rire were issued separately and never collected into and sold as a single volume; there are no records in OCLC/KVK, nor auction records in ABPC.

Plate 2. Chasse au flambeau. Ces Messieurs doivent avoir une bien belle vue!
Petit-a-compte. Observateurs par etat.
(Torch hunt. These gentlemen must have a beautiful view!
A-small-account. State observers.).

Yet these plates were found within an album of others  by chez Osterwald; it was not uncommon at all for a print shop to gather together miscellaneous unsold prints into albums for sale, the albums routinely issued without title pages or any other identifying information beyond that found on the plates themselves. It was simply a practical way to market slow-moving merchandise. Plates by Philipon's friend and later employee, C.J. Traviés, appear in the Album pour Rire series, as well as the anonymously designed Preuve frappante du danger de faibles Tirant with lithography by Georges Frey that I've included below as a contrast to Philipon's middling work.

Plate 1. Une farce. L'amour des Pénates. Nous de payons plus, Monsieur.
Mise décent. Un rosier dans toute sa portée.
(A farce. Love the Penates. We pay more, sir. Last décent.
A rose in all its scope.).

In 1829, a year after Philipon contributed these plates for Ostervald's Album pour Rire, he became the junior partner in La Silhouette. In 1830, constrained by  his partners and wanting total control over all aspects of production, he established La Caricature. Its success forced La Silhouette out of business. 

Unnumbered Plate. (Anonymous). Preuve frappante du danger de faibles Tirant.   
(Striking proof of the danger of a short pull).

Establishing a second magazine, Le Charivari, in the autumn of 1832, Philipon, an artist of little talent but big ideas and strong entrepreneurial spirit, became the most celebrated publisher of lithographic plates of his time. With a stable of gifted lithographic artists that executed his ideas and became the most celebrated group of caricaturists in history, Philipon's efforts raised a low-brow genre to high-brow art.

Detail.

We see here, in Preuve frappante du danger de faibles Tiran, from Album pour Rire, what might, just a few years hence, have been an allegory for Philipon against King Louis-Philippe I and the dangers of promising liberalization and then reneging on it.

Detail.

The king gets a swift kick in the mouth from a gleeful adversary.

Soon, alas, the gleeful adversary is counting the days to his release from prison. Philipon became the most prosecuted publisher of his time.

__________

PHILIPON, Charles. TRAVIES, C.J., et al. Album pour Rire. Paris: chez Osterwald, n.d. [1828]. Lithography by Ducarme, G. Frey, etc. A series of hand-colored lithographic plates of at least fifteen in number, at least nine of which are signed "Ch. Philipon."

__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

__________

Booktryst recently took a look at one of the great French anti-censorship lithographs  that was part of the Album pour Rire series, La Chasse aux Lettres, which you're sure to enjoy.

__________

__________