Popular works
The relative freedom enjoyed by the press after 1881 made the magazines an important platform for socially engaged artists. Magazine illustrations offered them a way to reach both a large and a broad public while also generating some income, so that they no longer had to rely on the conservative salons.
It was for good reason then that when the caricaturist-illustrateur Jean Louis Forain (1852-1931)was asked where his next exhibition would be held, he answered: ‘in the kiosks’.
Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, Housewife and Children Returning from the Laundry House (Ménagère et enfants rentrant du lavoir), 1899
Recognisable types
The caricaturistes-illustrateurs did not channel their talent only into magazine illustrations, but book covers and posters too. They used coarse lines and large areas of colour to make their message visually striking, and worked the text into their designs. The types they depicted – dandy, tramp and prostitute, for instance – were easily recognizable to passers-by.
Jules Chéret, Cover for the book Paris qui rit by Georges Duval, 1886
Further reading
Richard Thomson, ‘Illustration, caricature and the type’, in: Claire Frèches-Thory, Anne Roquebert and Richard Thomson, Toulouse-Lautrec, London 1991
Patricia Eckert Boyer, The Artist as Illustrator in Fin-de-Siecle Paris, New Brunswick 1988
Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho, Prints in Paris 1900: From Elite to the Street, Amsterdam 2017