A new exhibition of a selection of facsimiles of Cambridge University Library’s collection of 1870-71 caricatures is opening on 12 February at the Seeley Library (History faculty). This accompanies an ongoing translation project. This year, Geordie Cheetham worked on the translation and commentary of the song “La Complainte de Badinguet” (Badinguet’s Lament, CUL, KF.3.9, p. 162), published in Paris c. 1870 and attributed to the caricaturist, painter and song-writer André Gill (1840-1885).
This satirical piece imagines the (by that point former) French Emperor Napoleon III writing a lament following his defeat and capture in the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71). He was nicknamed ‘Badinguet’ after the name of a worker who helped him escape from prison following an attempted coup in 1846. The image shows the demoted emperor playing a barrel organ inscribed “Sedan” and his son Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte picking his nose and making a collection, accompanied by a skeletal eagle. Continue reading “La Complainte de Badinguet by André Gill (1870): translation and exhibition”→
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.
Frederick Justen (1832-1906), working at Soho-based Dulau & Co. booksellers, produced different sets of caricatures from the Franco-Prussian and the Commune (1870-71), including some at Cambridge University Library, at the British Library and Heidelberg University Library. A close inspection of one of the prints in the sixth and final volume of Cambridge University Library’s 1870/71 caricatures (KF.3.9-14) shows the challenges raised by the identification of the subjects of the caricatures and suggests that Justen updated the collection as late as October 1878. Digitised in late 2020 and the subject of an online display, some of these prints are currently exhibited in the Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics Library. One of the particularly interesting facets of this collection is the existence of similar sets, all produced by Justen. Despite sharing the same red binding, title page and 1872 article from the Atheneum advertising the sets, the various Justen collections are not identical. This diversity provides ample room for investigation, and one entry point is the case of an Italian print in Cambridge’s sixth volume entitled ‘Il Gallo di Alfredo il Piccolo’, which appears to have been printed much later than any other print found in this compilation.
A few weeks ago, we opened a new exhibition in the Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics library, relating to a collection of 1870-71 caricatures held in the University Library. This project was highly collaborative, involving librarians, academic staff and students. It followed an exhibition held at the UL last year and started with translations of the text and legends of French caricatures into English.
A display of our collection of Franco-Prussian caricatures, is on until 7 May 2022 on the first floor of Cambridge University Library, for readers and visitors. The online exhibition is now also available, providing a snapshot of how 1870-71 caricaturists represented the overthrown Napoleon III and the imperial family (a favourite object of ridicule), or the Prussian enemy (Wilhelm I and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, featured, along with German soldiers, as comical yet relentless conquerors and plunderers).
W. Alexis, Triumphal entry in Paris of Bismarck and Wilhelm I, 1871 CUL, KF.3.10, p. 58
The virtual exhibition gives a glimpse of Paris under siege, through the role of women, who often carried the burden of dealing with penury and food shortages, and helped in the war effort, working as nurses, or even volunteering to form battalions of female soldiers. They were also blamed for their frivolity and treachery…
Morsabeau (Eugène Rosambeau), “Les Boucheries”, 1870, CUL, KF.3.11, p. 17
We look at how the cartoonists depicted the transition from the Second French Empire to the Third Republic, divided between the moderate Thiers government, based in Versailles, and the more radical and progressive members of the Paris Commune, established in the spring of 1871… Here is thelinkto the virtual exhibition.
Adolphe Thiers (Head of the Republican government) as a cameleon lighting the fire of the Paris Commune… Le Lampion, March 1871, CUL, KF.3.10, p. 168
Finally, don’t forget the talk ‘Allons enfants de la patrie’: Children and the Wars of 1870-71, Thursday 31 March, 5-6 pm in the Milstein room. We have a couple of spaces left for a tour of the library’s Historical printing room led by its curator Colin Clarkson before the event: if you are interested please get in touch (french@lib.cam.ac.uk)!
As part of the Cambridge Festival 2022 programme, you can now book a place to attend a talk exploring the representations of French children during the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. It will take place on Thursday 31 March from 5 to 6 pm in the Milstein room. We will be using literary and visual material from a historical collection of caricatures that will be on display at Cambridge University Library from 10 March to 7 May 2022.
From September 1870 to May 1871, the siege of Paris by the Prussians was followed by a civil war which opposed the radical left-wing members of the Paris Commune to the more moderate Republicans leading the French government. The French military defeat, the hardships of life under prolonged sieges, and the political experiments of the Paris Commune –which ended in a massacre–, had a profound impact on the daily lives of Parisian people and especially children.
Their perspective is reflected in the works of writers such as Alphonse Daudet and Guy de Maupassant. In Paris, this fuelled the production of a flurry of caricatures which circulated widely, often disseminated by the illustrated press. They portray children as victims of the war as well as privileged witnesses of the historical events unfolding around them. If children are often used as beacons of hope, torchbearers for the progressive aims of the Commune, they are also invested with the ideology of revenge against the Germans…
We are also delighted that a long awaited display of the Franco-Prussian caricatures, featuring, among others, Emperors Napoleon III and Wilhelm I, and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, will take place from 10 March to 7 May 2022 in one of the Royal enclosures on the first floor of the University Library. Members of the University need to bring their blue card. External visitors can sign in and get a lanyard from the Reader Services Desk in the entrance hall, in order to come and see the small exhibition. If you cannot make it in person, here is a link to the virtual exhibition!
The digitised collection of Cambridge caricatures of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune (KF.3.9-14) is the subject of a new film featuring the University Library’s historical printing presses and produced by the Digital Content Unit.
Look out for the forthcoming exhibition on the first floor of the University Library!
It will feature satirical representations of the defeated French Emperor Napoleon III, and of the victorious German Emperor Wilhelm I and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
Re-blogged from the French Studies Francofil mailing list:
Le Sire de Fisch-Ton-Kan (Ed. Renaux)
The nineteenth-century French group at the University of Cambridge is keen to attract applicants to come to work as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities in Cambridge for 3 years on the large collection in the University Library of caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune (KF.3.9-14). Details of the overall scheme are available here.
Applicants may have doctoral qualifications in Digital Humanities, but applications are also welcomed from postdoctoral researchers in cognate areas (including Modern Languages). Applicants should demonstrate an engagement with DH issues, familiarity with DH methods, and an understanding of the changes in epistemic cultures digital transformation produces. High-level technical skills are not necessarily required but may be part of the application to Cambridge Digital Humanities. The application closing date is 10 November 2019. Continue reading “3-year Postdoctoral Fellowships in Digital Humanities and the Cambridge 1870-71 French caricature collection”→
Last year the Bibliothèque nationale de France organised Les Nadar, un légende photographique, an exhibition on this family of photographers (accompanying catalogue: S950.b.201.5289 featuring Paul Nadar’s portrait of Sarah Bernhardt on the cover). The most important of these was Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, photography pioneer, freelance writer and caricaturist, known by his pseudonym, Nadar. In addition, his son Paul and his half-brother Adrien Tournachon were gifted photographers.
Caricature of F. Nadar in La lune, 1867, 2015.8.2833
Félix Nadar was born in 1820 into a family of printers and booksellers in Lyon. From a young age he was an admirer of Dumas, Hugo and Balzac. He started to study medicine in Lyon but once his father died in 1837, he had to quit and moved to Paris. There he started his career as writer and caricaturist, collaborating in some journals. He frequented the Parisian bohemian scene in the Latin Quarter; where he met important writers, such as Dumas (father), Balzac, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, George Sand, Alfred de Vigny, the Goncourt brothers… Nadar was part of “the water drinkers”, the bohemian circle of Henry Murguer. Félix was well connected and maintained his links with these friends later on. Continue reading “Nadar: the story of a photography pioneer”→
Cambridge University Library holds six large volumes of illustrated plates entitled Collection de caricatures et de charges pour servir à l’histoire de la guerre et de la révolution de 1870-1871 (KF.3.9-14). Among those, the digitisation of volume 1 is now available on Cambridge Digital library. This is a set of highly interesting primary material, visual sources dealing with the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. The caricatures, most of them coloured, make fun of politicians and public figures of the time, soldiers and civil populations during the war and the siege of Paris by the Germans. They were probably assembled in Paris shortly after the events, then brought to London, where several sets were compiled and subsequently sold or donated to different institutions, up to the 1880s: the British Library (at least 10 vols), Heidelberg University Library (9 vols), the Victoria & Albert Museum (9 vols), Cambridge University Library (6 vols) and the Bodleian Library (1 vol.).
French Emperor Napoleon III, Cambridge University Library, KF.3.9
Languages across Borders 