Charles Philipon

Charles Philipon came from a small, middle-class, Lyons family. His father, Étienne Philipon, was a hatter and wallpaper manufacturer. He enthusiastically welcomed the revolution of 1789. According to Pierre Larousse his ancestors included Manon Roland, Armand Philippon, and Louis Philipon de La Madelaine.

After attending school in Lyons and Villefranche-sur-Saône, Charles Philipon studied drawing at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon. He left his hometown in 1819 to work under the artist Antoine Gros in Paris but returned at his father's behest in 1821 to join the family business, designing fabric for three years. Though this activity did not suit him, it left its mark on his subsequent work. During hard economic and social times in 1824, he took part in a Lyons carnival parade that was deemed seditious; he was arrested, but ultimately charges were dropped.

Charles Philipon finally left Lyon for Paris where he reunited with old friends from the workshop Gros. One of them, Nicolas Toussaint Charlet, a renowned artist, took him under his wing and introduced him to lithography, a technique spreading in France in the 1820s. Philipon found employment as a lithographer and artist drawing for picture books and fashion magazines. He showed invention by converting a lead chimney to a lithographic machine. He bonded with the liberals and satirists of the day, attended the Grandville workshop (1827), and two years later joined forces with the creators of the newspaper La Silhouette, on which he worked as an editor and designer.

While Philipon's financial contribution to the company was small, his editorial contribution seems to have focused on the organisation of the lithographic department, which gave the paper its originality inasmuch as the same importance was given to the illustration as to the text. Whereas La Silhouette previously had no definite political line, by July 1830 it had developed a more aggressive approach. It is in this journal that on 1 April 1830, Philipon published the first political cartoon, " Charles X Jesuit."

On 15 December 1829 Philipon sent his son and business partner, Gabriel Aubert, to set up the Aubert publishing house Aubert, competing with other printing shops in Paris. The Veronique Dodat pass, where the publishing house could be found, was to become in the following years a "place of breathtaking [commercial] war" (Ch. Lèdre).

After the revolution of July 1830, Philipon published on 4 November that year an illustrated weekly under the title La Caricature. Sold by subscription only, it had four pages of text and two lithographies in a larger format than that of Silhouette. Associated with the creation of Philipon newspaper, Honoré de Balzac wrote in the prospectus and gave it under various pseudonyms thirty articles until February 1832. The journal was primarily designed as an elegant illustrated magazine, with the drawings printed on vellum paper. The lithographs were printed on separate text and tear sheets. At first, La Caricature adopted a non-political attitude before coming to oppose July Monarchy in the spring of 1832.

On 1 December 1832, while imprisoned, Philipon published Le Charivari, an illustrated daily with four pages in a smaller than Caricature format. More varied and more "popular" than its predecessor, it was not limited to political caricature. Charivari was the only daily caricature journal of nineteenth-century France. According to the prospectus, Charivari was intended as "comprehensive overview of all the constantly recurring events, by pencil and pen, of all the various aspects of this kaleidoscopic world in which we live." The lithographs are of lower quality than in La Caricature, but better integrated into the text. Thereafter, the presentation of Charivari changed significantly.

As the owner of these two newspapers, Philipon retained full control of all aspects of the papers' written and lithographic content.

He chooses his collaborators, dealing with suppliers in the market as well as financial management. In an obituary published in 1862, Nadar the credits of "extraordinary lucidity in business" coupled with "inexhaustible fertility of invention and means". Employer of his artist friends, it defines the objectives with them, suggest topics, coordinating text and lithography. He does not hesitate to ask for changes to avoid censorship. To ensure editorial consistency, writing is reduced to a small team of highly dedicated journalists (in February 1834, they are seven Philipon included).

The testimony of his contemporaries emphasises Philipon's charisma who inspired writers and caricaturists in his employ. Himself focusing on lithographs, his publishing house had an almost complete monopoly on this type of publication as of 1831, with a third of all lithographs published in Paris coming from him.

From political cartoon to satire of manners (after 1835)

If the " September Laws " mark the end of the political cartoon in his " vehement " version Philipon not remains active. In addition to the reissue of La Caricature Caricature became Provisional (1838), also called " non-political cartoon," he published in Le Charivari series Robert Macaire (1836–1838), the Museum to laugh designs for all cartoonists Paris (1839–1840), the Museum or comic store Philipon (1843), Paris comic (1844), Le Journal pour rire (1848–1855), became the fun Journal (1856), where the proceeds essentially comic satire manners.

The purpose of this "library for fun " is to distract and entertain through the creation of " social types " representative, the physiologies, very popular with the public.

The most emblematic kinds were illustrated in particular by Daumier (Ratapoil, Robert Macaire) Travies (M.Mayeux), Henry Monnier (Joseph Prudhomme) Gavarni (Thomas Vireloque). Vogue physiologies was conducive to Aubert House: February 1841 to August 1842, she published thirty-two different physiologies representing three quarters of production in this period.

However, it is not always easy to disentangle the social satire of political satire. In this regard, the series of Robert Macaire is highly significant. Composed and drawn by Daumier about ideas and legends Philipon, all met in volume under the title Les Cent and Robert Macaire (1839). The large drawings are reduced and accompanied by a comic and narrative written by journalists Maurice Alhoy and Louis Huart. Emphatically presented as an avatar of Don Quixote and Gil Blas, the character of Robert Macaire, in tandem with the naive Bertrand, embodies in its facets and multiple roles a social type characterised by the term " floueur " master diddle all kinds and emblem dominated by the interest and profiteering society (Marx refer to Louis-Philippe as to " Robert Macaire on his throne"). This " high comedy " that offers the company a particularly cynical and ruthless image is reminiscent of the Human Comedy of Balzac, she would somehow pendant for caricature.

In the same period, Philipon published The Floueur (1850), the first series of the Library for fun, the Anglo-French Museum (1855–1857) in collaboration with Gustave Doré, Aux proletarians (with Agénor Altaroche, 1838) and parody wandering Jew (Louis Huart, 1845), inspired by the work of Eugène Sue.

November 1831 trial

"First fruit of France"

On trial on 14 November 1831, Philipon, sure to be condemned, defended himself arguing that everything can be made to look like the king, and that he and other caricaturists cannot be held responsible for this resemblance. He illustrated its defense by the metamorphosis by drawing, in four stages, the King's face evolving into a pear. This imagery became a widely used reference and symbol of the revolution, even outside of Paris.

The widespread appearance of the pears is well documented by a vast array of people of the times, including William Makepeace Thackeray, Heinrich Heine, Charles Baudelaire, Stendhal, and Sebastien Peyte, who wrote a book titled Physiology of the Pear, collecting puns and spin-offs of the imagery. Victor Hugo in Les Misérables pays homage to the imagery as a young boy sketches an image of a pear on a wall, when the king helped him finish it and handed him a gold Louis coin saying, "The pear is on that too."

Pears began to represent the regime and its associates, and began showing up more often in both La Caricature and Le Charivari including,

Daumier's A huge pear hanging by the commoners

Grandville's The Birth of the Juste- Milieu

Travies' Mr. Mahieux poiricide

Bouquet's Pear and pips

Philipon later published an image of a giant pear statue being erected at the Place de la Concorde with the title "The expiapoire monument is raised on the site of the Revolution, exactly where Louis XVI was guillotined." Expiapoire is a portmanteau of expiatoire meaning "expiatory" and poire meaning "pear". He was tried for this piece and the prosecution called this piece "a provocation of murder". Philipon responded with, "It would be at most a provocation to make marmalade".

Doomed for closing in August after a censorship law was passed in 1835, La Caricature published the relevant portion of the law's text in the shape of a pear with the legend "Other fruits of the July Revolution".