If over the recent holidays you have been roped into playing party games, which ones would you have encountered in 1870-71? Among the latest paper cut-out games and board games, fully engaging with contemporary historical and political events, Parisians of the time could have tackled the two “Jeux caméléoniens”, or Chameleonic Games by Louis-Valentin-Émile de La Tremblais, a painter and draughtsman probably of aristocratic origin.

De La Tremblais produced two variants of the game which featured demoted personalities of the time. The first one includes members of the Imperial Bonaparte family and supporters of the Second French Empire. This period lasted from 14 January 1852, after the coup d’état of President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who became Emperor Napoleon III, to 4 September 1870, after the French defeat against the Germans at the battle of Sedan.

On the recto feature:

• Napoleon I in a nightgown holding an enema pump (a mocking reference to the health problems of the glorious French emperor)
• Napoleon III as a pig wearing the Legion of Honor
• The head of government Émile Ollivier as a lawyer
• Princess Mathilde Bonaparte with the body of a cook

On the verso of this plate appear:

• Pierre-Napoléon Bonaparte wearing multiple weapons, a probable reference to the murder of Victor le Noir, whom he infamously killed on 10 January 1870 because of a dispute with his fellow journalist Henri Rochefort
• Empress Eugénie as a Spanish dancer (she was a Spanish countess, Eugenia de Montijo, before marrying the French emperor in 1853)
• Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the heir to the throne, riding a donkey
• The Bonapartist politician Charlemagne de Maupas with the body of a clown playing drums

The focus on distinct individuals from the French imperial family and government creates a strong link between these games and the contemporary series of satirical portraits among which they are held within the Paris and Cambridge collections of 1870-71 caricatures.

The presentation in the form of a plate of the images of the Chameleonic game suggests eight initial combinations. But following the instructions “Cut out the outline and the marked net in the middle” allows the viewer to become a player and the print to become a three-dimensional interactive fold in-fold out game. They can form different trios and pairs, and each character in turn can be given four different bodies, allowing for more variations or possible scenarios. Through this manipulation, the characters do not have fixed attributes anymore, but can exchange roles and gender in a comical and creative way. They cross-dress and share and assume roles beyond the imperial or political dignity.

The motto “Tous se transforment et n’en valent pas mieux” (All are transformed and are no better) adds to the satirical perspective of the portraits, while the manipulation of the image increases the degradation and grotesque representation of the political figures.

 The same frame is used for a second Chameleonic game, this time depicting elected members of the Council of the Paris Commune, a revolutionary government of Paris which ruled between 18 March and 28 May 1871, when it was quashed by the forces of the more conservative Versailles-based Republican government at the end of the “Bloody Week”. The same maxim on change expresses a condescending judgment on their integrity.

On the recto, they are:

•  Félix Pyat, journalist and writer, founder of Le Combat and Le Vengeur (suppressed by the government of National Defence); he was a member of the Committee of Public Safety of the Commune and eventually took refuge in London: he appears as condemned to the cauldron of hell
• Charles Delescluze who founded the anti-Bonapartist newspaper Le Réveil in 1868; a member of the Committee of Public Safety, he died on the barricades during the Bloody Week and appears as a dancing bear
• The famous painter Gustave Courbet, elected representative of the Commune and depicted as such -he was notoriously held responsible for the destruction of the Vendôme column
• Auguste Vermorel, a young socialist and revolutionary writer, who during the Commune briefly published the newspapers  L’Ordre and L’ami du peuple, and died in prison of wounds received on the barricades during the Bloody Week, as a puppet who springs out of his box

 On the verso feature:

• Théophile Ferré, public prosecutor of the Commune and delegate to the Paris Préfecture de police, eventually sentenced to death: he is represented as a caterpillar
• Raoul Rigault, a journalist appointed to the Préfecture de police and head of the General Security Commission, who was executed during the Bloody Week; he appears as an “assassin” tied to the stake
• Adolphe Assy commander-in-chief of the National Guard, who was eventually exiled to New Caledonia, depicted as a “pétroleur” (an arsonist Communard)
• Jules Vallès, writer and editor of the daily Cri du Peuple in  1871, sentenced to death, who went into exile in England, appearing as an elected representative of the Commune armed but pierced by a sword

The seriousness of the portraits is mockingly degraded by the interplay of permutations, in particular by the formation of a growing number of hybrids with animal bodies. All these personalities, many socialist or radical journalists, met tragic ends, or suffered from their political engagement in the Commune. As the Chameleonic game is based on combinations, it conveys the idea of the interchangeability of the personalities of the Commune but can also suggest a form of logical sequence and shared trajectory in the unfolding of their fateful destiny.

On the front, the image of the devil coming out of his box suggests a comic opportunism that contrasts with the severity of the official dress of the Commune representative wearing the red scarf of his office. The assassin (a reference to the crimes committed by the Communards, in particular the execution of the archbishop of Paris) is taken to the firing squad and ends up boiling in the hellish cauldron.

On the verso, the fairground bear with its ridiculous performance transforms into a repulsive and voracious caterpillar before becoming an arsonist who eventually dies, weapons in hand. The alternation of real and imagined situations contributes to the serious and playful dimension of the Chameleonic game, which exhibits, with a comic and pejorative perspective, the fate of writers and politicians presented as destined for the torments of hell.

The survival of the Chameleonic games in the Paris and Cambridge 1870-1871 caricatures collections indicates that those prints were not used to their full potential, neither cut nor folded. Conversely, those who were cut-out at the time likely did not survive. But the preservation of the plates and modern means of reproduction allow for the creation of facsimiles, substitutes which can be played with and whose handling gives us an irreplaceable perspective on the working out of the game and to unfold its complex meaning. The Chameleonic games thus make us reflect on and laugh at the ups and downs and seemingly interchangeable tragi-comic destinies of the political actors they put on stage.

References:

Collection de caricatures et de charges pour servir à l’histoire de la guerre et de la révolution de 1870-1871, Cambridge University Library KF.3.9-14

Fabry-Tehranchi, I., “Cambridge caricatures of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune (1870-71)”, Languages across Borders, 2019.

Clarkson, C. T., Fabry-Tehranchi, I., White, N. and Mikula, B., Caricatures of the Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune, 2021. [film]

Fabry-Tehranchi, I., “Des jeux dans les collections de caricatures de la guerre franco-prussienne et de la Commune, 1870-1871“, Les éphémères imprimés et l’image : Histoire et patrimonialisation, dir. Olivier Belin, Florence Ferran, Bertrand Tillier, Editions universitaires de Dijon, 2023, p. 21-36, C202.b.8251.

Fabry-Tehranchi, I., Pliage et dépliage du Jeu caméléonien de Louis-Valentin-Emile de La Tremblais (1871). Apollo – University of Cambridge Repository, 2023. [animated film]