L’Illustration was a French weekly newspaper created just one year after the Illustrated London News, from which its publishers drew some of their inspiration. It met with great success throughout the remainder of the nineteenth... Read more
George Cruikshank's special merit (I leave aside all his other merits, such as subtlety of expression, intelligence of the fantastique, etc.) is an inexhaustible abundance in the grotesque. This verve is unbelievable and would be said to be... Read more
A work illustrated by Cruikshank, Leech, and Tenniel, even if it had no intrinsic merits of its own, would stand a very fair chance of immortality; but when the three great artists combine simply to embellish what would otherwise live as long as... Read more
Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane wasn't the first illustrated French book of the Romantic era. To name only two, Légendes, ballades et fabliaux by Bahour-Lormian (1829), Nodier's Histoire du roi de Bohême et de ses sept... Read more
It was at the Café de L’Horloge in Paris. Mr. Whistler sat leaning on his cane, looking off into space, dreamily and wearily.
He aroused enough to answer the question:
“Doré—Gustave Doré—an artist? Why, the name sounds familiar! Oh, yes... Read more
Léon Job-Vernet was a painter, pastellist, and lithographer born in Paris May 11, 1830. He studied painting with Léon Cogniet (1764-1880) – who also taught Messonnier, Rosa Bonheur, Charbonnel…–and he was admitted to the Paris École des Beaux-Arts... Read more
As we attempt, at the present day, to write the history of everything, it would be strange if we had happened to neglect the annals of caricature; for the very essence of the art of Cruikshank and Gavarni, of Daumier and Leech, is to be historical... Read more
When Jules Janin wrote in L'Artiste itself the history of L'Artiste, he gave a pompous account of magazine contributors with exclamations, enthusiasm, emotion, sighs and tears for each of them. He also insisted especially... Read more
Sandys, Antony Frederick, A.N., generally called Frederick Sandys, sometimes F. K. Sandys from his habit of signing the name Frederick thus, “Fk. Sandys.” This clever artist was bom at Norwich in 1832, and educated at the Norwich Grammar School... Read more
Frédéric de Courcy was a painter, born Alexandre-Frédéric Charlot de Courcy in Paris on March 28, 1832. His father, a writer of light comedies, was also known as Frédéric de Courcy. For the record, the cast of one of his plays, Le Courrier de la... Read more
Émile Marcelin, whose real name was Émile Planat, was born in 1825. From 1850 to 1870, he was the special cartoonist for humorous pages on stylish life in Le Journal Amusant and L’Illustration at first and later in La Vie... Read more
Aventures de Robert-Robert et de son fidèle compagnon Toussaint Lavenette (Adventures of Robert-Robert and of his faithful companion Toussaint Lavenette) was written by Louis Desnoyers (1802-1868) and first published, as it seems, in 1839... Read more
