Prof‑Toutou

Honoré Daumier was one of the great French caricaturists of the nineteenth century. Working for La Caricature and Le Charivari, he attacked Louis‑Philippe so fiercely that his famous Gargantua earned him six months in prison in 1832. But he also drew lawyers, bourgeois society and ordinary Parisian life with extraordinary observation and humanity.

The illustrated press expanded rapidly, helped by printing techniques such as wood engraving that made images cheaper to reproduce in large numbers. Newspapers needed new pictures every week, and caricature became a real profession as well as a way to comment on politics and society.

A portrait-charge exaggerates the physical features of a specific recognisable person. Caricature is broader: it can include portrait-charge, but also scenes, social types, situations and criticism of society.

James Gillray was an English artist of the late eighteenth century who mocked kings, politicians and especially Napoleon. People gathered outside print shops to see his latest image — rather like waiting for the newest viral meme today.

Honoré Daumier is the best-known name, alongside publisher and caricaturist Charles Philipon, Grandville and Gavarni. Philipon’s transformation of Louis‑Philippe into a pear became one of the most famous visual symbols of the period.

Woof! Question 1: Which publisher hired the young Gustave Doré? Question 2: Which French artist was imprisoned after attacking Louis‑Philippe? Question 3: Which eighteenth-century English artist became a master of political satire? Question 4: Which printing technique helped illustrated newspapers expand in the nineteenth century?