Background
Nicolas Toussaint Charlet was born in Paris on the 20th of December 1792. He was the son of a dragoon in the Republican army, whose death in the ranks left the widow and orphan in very poor circumstances.
(La Caricature was the 19th Century equivalent and the pre...)
La Caricature was the 19th Century equivalent and the precursor of Charlie Hebdo. The editor Charles Philipon employed the major satirical artists of the mid-19th Century notably Daumier, Grandville, E. Forest, Charlet, Bellangé , Traviès, Raffet and Gavarni. It appeared for five years, between 1830-1835. The main subjects of the caricatures were Louis-Philippe and his entourage of July Monarchy politicians. Louis-Philippe, son of the Duke of Orléans, came to power after the 1830 Revolution as the Citizen King. However, he was not amused by the caricatures and once put Daumier in prison for 6 months, before suppressing the whole publication in 1835. He became more and more authoritarian and was finally forced to abdicate during the 1848 Revolution. The plates are numbered 1-524, but approximately 62 are double sheets so there are actually 462 separate prints. Georges Vicaire catalogued the 251 issues and 524 plates in 1895. However they have never been reproduced in a catalogue, nor has there been an English language discussion or catalogue of the corpus of prints Alan Wofsy Fine Arts of San Francisco will be publishing the first illustrated catalogue of all the lithographs that were published in La Caricature, 1830-1835 in the Spring of 2017. All of the works are described in French and English and are arranged in the order they appeared in the original publication. There is an index by artist and the catalogue by Georges Vicaire from 1895 is also included. Many of the artists contributed anonymously and were not identified by Vicaire but are now identified. Where there were no descriptions of the plates in the original publication (about 60 of the 462), this new edition now provides descriptions in French. There are essays in English are by Gordon Norton Ray and Edwin De Turck Bechtel and in French by Henri Beraldi and Georges Vicaire The general editor and designer is Corine Labridy-Stofle, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Melissa Bender, PhD, a lecturer at the University of California, Davis, and Joanna Oseman, a professional translator, have provided insightful English language descriptions of each of the caricatures. Alan Hyman, the editor of many catalogues raisonnés, is the Lektor. ________________________ Au XIXe siècle, La Caricature fut l'équivalent et le précurseur de Charlie Hebdo. Charles Philipon, son téméraire éditeur, y a rassemblé les grands plus artistes satiriques du milieu du siècle, notamment Daumier, Grandville, E. Forest, Charlet, Bellangé et Gavarni. Elle fut publiée pendant cinq ans, entre 1830-1835. Les principaux sujets des caricatures furent Louis Philippe et son entourage de politiciens, intronisés lors de la Monarchie de Juillet. Surnommé le Roi citoyen, Louis Philipe, fils du duc d'Orléans, arriva au pouvoir après la révolution de 1830. Malmené par Philipon et ses caricaturistes dès le début de son gouvernement, Louis Philipe n'était pas amusé par les dessins humoristiques qui le représentaient bien souvent sous les traits d'une poire. De rage, il fit même incarcérer Daumier, pendant 6 mois, puis bâillonnât enfin la publication pour de bon en 1835. Le Roi citoyen fut finalement forcé d'abdiquer lors de la révolution de 1848. Les planches sont numérotées de 1 à 524, mais environ 62 d'entre elles sont des planches doubles. Il y a donc 462 estampes distinctes.
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Nicolas Toussaint Charlet was born in Paris on the 20th of December 1792. He was the son of a dragoon in the Republican army, whose death in the ranks left the widow and orphan in very poor circumstances.
Nicolas Toussaint Charlet's first employment was in a Parisian mairie, where he had to register recruits: he served in the National Guard in 1814, fought bravely at the Barriere de Clichy, and, being thus unacceptable to the Bourbon party, was dismissed from the mairie in 1816. He then, having from a very early age had a propensity for drawing, entered the atelier of the distinguished painter Baron Gros, and soon began issuing the first of those lithographed designs which eventually brought him renown. His " Grenadier de Waterloo, " 1817, with the motto " La Garde meurt et ne se rend pas " (a famous phrase frequently attributed to Cambronne, but which he never uttered, and which cannot, perhaps, be traced farther than to this lithograph by Charlet), was particularly popular. It was only towards 1822, however, that he began to be successful in a professional sense. Lithographs (about 2000 altogether), water-colours, sepia-drawings, numerous oil sketches, and a few etchings followed one another rapidly; there were also three exhibited oil pictures, the first of which was especially admired- Episode in the Campaign of Russia" (1836), the " Passage of the Rhine by Moreau " (1837), " Wounded Soldiers Halting in a Ravine " (1843). Besides the military subjects in which he peculiarly delighted, and which found an energetic response in the popular heart, and kept alive a feeling of regret for the recent past of the French nation and discontent with the present, -a feeling which increased upon the artist himself towards the close of his career, --Charlet designed many subjects of town life and peasant life, the ways of children, &c. , with much wit and whim in the descriptive mottoes. One of the most famous sets is the " Vie civile, politique, et militaire du Caporal Valentin, " 50 lithographs, dating from 1838 to 1842.
(La Caricature was the 19th Century equivalent and the pre...)
Charlet was an uncommonly tall man, with an expressive face, bantering and good natured; his character corresponded, full of boyish fun and high spirits, with manly independence, and a vein of religious feeling, and he was a hearty favourite among his intimates, one of whom was the painter Gericault.
Charlet married in 1824, and two sons.