Ebook: Laugh Lines: Caricaturing Painting in Nineteenth-Century France

Laugh Lines: Caricaturing Painting in Nineteenth-Century France is the first major study of Salon caricature, a genre in which press artists drew comic versions of contemporary painting and sculpture for publication in widely consumed journals and albums. Salon caricature began with a few tentative lithographs in the 1840s and within a decade, no Parisian exhibition could open without appearing in warped, incisive, and hilarious miniature in the pages of the illustrated press.
This broad survey of Salon caricature examines little-known graphic artists and unpublished amateurs alongside major figures like Édouard Manet, puts anonymous jokesters in dialogue with the essays of Baudelaire and Zola, and holds up the material qualities of a 10-centime album to the wall-sized decorative painting of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. This archival study unearths colorful caricatures that have not been reproduced until now, drawing back the curtain on a robust culture of comedy around fine art and its reception in nineteenth-century France.