The Print, the Pear, and the Prostitute: Art, Politics, and Society in 19th-Century France

Louis-Philippe, the Orleanist "citizen-king," ruled during the period of France's July Monarchy (1830-48). A devoted husband and father of eight, he promoted the image of a bourgeois family man and defined his rule as representing juste-milieu--the middle ground, "equally distant from the abuses of royal power and the excesses of popular power."

His popularity, however, was short-lived. Relentlessly assaulted by caricaturists and even brought up on charges of lese-majeste--violating the dignity of the king; he was sentenced to prison for six months and fined 2,000 francs for the offense--Louis-Philippe saw his reign end with the Revolution of 1848. Forced into exile, he died in England in 1850 at age 77.

Perhaps his most pointed and famous critic was Honore-Victorin Daumier (1808-79), whose long and prolific career spanned both the July Monarchy and the Second Empire (1852-70). The work of Daumier, as well as that of Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Auguste Bouquet, Paul Gavarni, Auguste Desperret, and Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard (known as Grandville), among others, will be on display in "The Print, the Pear, and the Prostitute: Art Politics, and Society in 19th-Century France."

The exhibition--on view at Amherst (Mass.) College's Mead Art Museum through Aug. 20--ranges from satirical representations of King Louis-Philippe, depicted as a fat-headed pear, to images of the various types of women who defined 19th-century Parisian society. At the time, political and social caricature in France was considered more dangerous than the printed word.

Auguste Desperret, "Untitled," hand-colored lithograph (1833).

Atop three cages, Louis-Philippe sits with his back to the viewer in order to preserve anonymity; however, the toupee, whiskers, and pear shape reveal his identity. The three cages represent the Parisian prisons of Blaye, Ste. Pelagie, and La Force; the King, as jailor, grips the keys in his hand. Imprisoned in the upper cage is the Duchesse de Berri, daughter-in-law of Charles X and the mother of five-year-old legitimist pretender Henri V. Her aspirations for her son's ascension to the throne threatened Orleanist rule, so she was incarcerated. The print mocks the fact that Louis-Philippe actually was in favor of prison reform. For artists of the time who had been imprisoned for their political caricatures, the prison theme was imbued with a sense of the loss of freedom in a society that supposedly valued liberty for all.

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Auguste Bouquet, "The Pear's Whiskers/Favorites," hand-colored lithograph (1833).

In this print that appeared in the short-lived political opposition newspaper La Caricature--which was forced to shut down under the pressure of severe censorship laws--King Louis-Philippe is represented in the emblematic form of a pear, this time with a face. On either side of him, two ministers cling to his rapidly spoiling shape. Argout, with his distinctive long nose, sits on the left with his scissors for censorship; the minister of justice, Barthe, rests on the other side, creating the illusion of whiskers. In French, favoris means both "favorites" and "whiskers," a double entendre that many artists of the time played upon.

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Honore-Victorin Daumier, "Mlle. Etienne-Joconde-Cunegonde-Becassine de Constitutionnel, indignant, totally appalled, and rococofied, at the performance of 'Anthony,' in which this rascal of Dumas had the audacity to mock the noble family Becassine de Constitutionnel," lithograph (1834).

Bulging from her opera box, this obese and self-satisfied woman is the most farcical of Daumier's caricatures of Charles Guillaume Etienne. The artist's visual assault on the editor of Le Constitutionnel is amplified by a verbal attack in the title of the work, his subject's fictional female name. Etienne, also a dramatist, wrote the libretto to the comic opera "Joconde" (1814). A becassine is a little goose or a simpleton. Cunegonde is the name of a character from Voltaire's "Candide"; she is a self-centered, buxom German woman lacking in intelligence and complexity.

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Honore-Victorin Daumier, "In the Bell Section," lithograph (1855).

Daumier executed a series of 41 prints ("Bell Section" is No. 27) on the theme of the Universal Exposition in Paris. This great fair, a forerunner of 20th-century world fairs, was designed to rival the first international industrial exposition held in London four years earlier at the Crystal Palace; Napoleon III was the driving force behind it. The 1855 Exposition, itself an instrument of propaganda, promoted the national prestige of France with works demonstrating the country's artistic and technological supremacy. The sensationalism and sheer number of objects on display were meant to elicit awe and wonderment in the visitors to Paris, who came from the provinces and abroad.

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