Croquis Variés

Paris: Au Bureau du Journal le Charivari, 1857. Thirty Amusing Wood-Cut Illustrations by Honoré Daumier

DAUMIER, Honoré. Croquis Variés... Paris: Au Bureau du Journal le Charivari, [1857].

First edition. Small quarto (9 1/2 x 7 1/8 inches; 241 x 181 mm.). 16 leaves (including vignette title-page) all printed on one side only. Thirty amusing wood-cut illustrations. Some foxing throughout as is usual.

Publisher's pale green printed wrappers with advertisements on rear. Complete with the publisher's glassine wrapper. Apart from the usual foxing a remarkable survival of this very fragile little book.

First edition of this collection of plates by the famous illustrator, writer, sculptor. French lithographer and caricaturist, Honoré Daumier (Marseilles, February 26, 1808 - Valmondois, February 10, 1879), famous for his satirical cartoons targeting the political figures of the time. Daumier, from a very young age, demonstrated a propensity for drawing. In 1825 he was an apprentice of Beliard lithography, starting to collaborate, then, with the humorous newspaper "La Silhouette" demonstrating, right from the start, all his satirical verve. Among the first tables that he created, one caused a stir. In it, the caricaturist opposed the glorious Napoleonic tricolor to the restored Bourbon flag. Daumier's political commitment did not stop at paper but he took an active part in the revolutionary uprisings which overthrew the monarchy of Charles X in July 1830. During the uprisings he was also hit by a bullet. In 1835 he began his collaboration with the famous satirical newspaper directed by Charles Philipon and Gabriel Aubert "La Caricature" which gave him fame and visibility but also various problems which also led him to be imprisoned for a too ferocious cartoon towards Louis Philippe I of France , formerly Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans. Dumier in the following years became one of the most famous illustrators of France, collaborating with newspapers such as Le Charivari and La Chronique de Paris newspaper founded in 1836 by Balzac who also used the caricaturist for the images of some of his works and illustrating classic works and contemporary novels, achieving enormous success. Uncommon in this first edition.