Category Archives: Caricature and satire

Vellucent bindings


Vellucent binding: “A method of decorating (and protecting) a bookbinding utilizing transparent vellum. The technique was developed by Cedric Chivers sometime around 1903, and is designed not only for the protection of leather bindings, but also to protect covers bearing colored designs (usually pictorial in nature) painted on paper, attached to the boards, and then covered with the vellum. The vellucent covering is also suitable for highly decorative designs because it is possible to further embellish the design by means of mother-of-pearl, iridescent shell, and the like, all of which may be covered and permanently protected by the vellum. The surface of the vellum itself can he tooled in gold, thus further enhancing the entire effect. See also: EDWARDS OF HALIFAX . (94 , 236 )”—CoOL URL: http://cool.conservation-us.org/don/dt/dt3692.html

 

Thanks to Stephen J Gertz for the following: http://www.booktryst.com/2010/07/cedric-chivers-art-vs-library-bindings.html

“In his large bindery at Portway, Bath, Chivers employed about forty women for folding, sewing, mending, and collating work, and in addition, five more women worked in a separate department, to design, illuminate, and colour vellum for book decoration, and to work on embossed leather. These five were Dorothy Carleton Smyth, Alice Shepherd, Miss J.D. Dunn, Muriel Taylor, and Agatha Gales. Most Vellucent bindings were designed by H. Granville Fell, but the woman most frequently employed for this kind of work was probably Dorothy Carleton Smyth” (Marianne Tidcombe, Women Bookbinders 1880-1920, p. 86).

“Smyth [1880-1933] was born in Glasgow, the daughter of a jute manufacturer. She studied art in Manchester and then attended the Glasgow School of Art from 1895 until 1905. Her stained glass piece Tristan and Iseult was exhibited at the International Exhibition in 1901, and in 1903 an anonymous female patron paid for Smyth to study in Europe. At first Smyth was best known as a portraitist, particularly for her sketches of theatre personalities. Later she specialised in theatre costume working in London, Paris and Sweden. She designed costumes for several of the Shakespearean Festivals held in Stratford-upon-Avon, beginning in 1906. Smyth was appointed Principal of Commercial Art at Glasgow School of Art in 1914, and began to concentrate more on teaching than costume design. However, in 1916 she designed costume and decoration for the Quinlan Opera Company’s world tour. In 1933 Smyth was appointed as the first woman director of the School of Art, but died before she could take up the post” (The Glasgow Story).

Fanny Burney (Madame D’Arblay), Evelina or The History of A Young Lady’s Entrance Into The World; With an Introduction by Austin Dobson and Illustrations by Hugh Thomson. Bound by Cedric Chivers (London: Macmillan & Co Limited, 1903). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Our new acquisition is completed in a “vellucent” binding by Cedric Chivers of Bath, stamp-signed on the back turn-in, of transparent vellum over paper. Front cover with a multi-color painted architecturally frame with three mother of pearl inlays enclosing an original painting of Evelina after Hugh Thomson frontispiece, with the title and author hand-lettered. Spine with matching decoration, lettering and mother of pearl ring around Burney’s name. Back panel painted plus another mother of pearl ring and painted multi-color floral gatherings in the corners. Vellum and paper doublures ruled in gilt.

The British Library printed this biography of the author:

“Burney’s entry into the world of letters was elaborately strategised and much anguished over, much like the debuts into society through which she put the heroines of her most celebrated novels. After a childhood spent writing stories and plays, Burney anonymously published her first novel, Evelina, in 1778. Wary of the public eye and uncertain how her family would react to her writing for a mass audience, Burney sought to keep her authorship secret for as long as possible. But, after months of public speculation and the praise of literary figures such as Hester Thrale and Samuel Johnson, Burney owned the novel as her own.

…Burney’s father introduced her to important writers, actors and artists – David Garrick and Joshua Reynolds socialised at the Burney household – but was conservative in his estimation of what literary genres were suitable for women writers. Burney was discouraged by her father and close family friend Samuel Crisp from writing comedy and satire, particularly for the stage. Instead, she put her sharp insight into the foibles and mannerisms of society to good use in her next novel, Cecilia (1782), which sold widely and cemented Burney’s literary reputation and her status as a literary celebrity in London.”– https://www.bl.uk/people/frances-burney

Princeton University Library also owns this half vellucent binding in the Cotsen Children’s Library:  Geoffroy de La Tour Landry (active 14th century), The booke of thenseygnementes and techynge that the Knyght of the Towre made to his doughters (London: George Newnes, 1902) (London & Edinburgh : Ballantyne Press) Cotsen Children’s Library Press 40742.

 

Thanks to Edward Levin for sharing his copy of Eleanor Vere Boyle, Days and Hours in a Garden (London: Elliot Stock, 1898) Chivers catalogue no. lxxxvi, with a similar binding.

 

21,552 portraits in a treen

Changeable Portraits of Ladies (London: R. Ackermann, Jan. 1, 1819). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Followed rapidly by ‘Chageable Ladies’ (1819), the Changeable Gentleman’ novelty was introduced by Rudolph Ackermann in London in 1818. It consisted of a set of caricature-profile cards … in which each picture is horizontally cut into three divisions corresponding, roughly, to hair, forehead, and eyes in the top portion; nose and ear in the narrower middle part; and mouth, chin, and neck in the lower part. The divisions allow productions of an infinite variety of faces. The cards are presented in wooden slide-top boxes … each having wooden dividers to separate upper, middle, and lower sections.–Michael Twyman, Encyclopedia of Ephemera

This clever variation on a transformation or metamorphosis game involves a series of 28 hand colored aquatint portraits, each cut into three sections arranged in a treen or a small wooden box with three compartments and a sliding lid. According to the instructions (under the lid) this toy permits the possibility of twenty-one thousand nine hundred and fifty-two different permutations.

“Each Head being separated into three moveable parts, the changing of any one of these parts will produce a new face including many celebrated characters, such as Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, Catherine II, &c. &c.; in short, almost every imaginable diversity of countenance and character. the grand, the grotesque, the beautiful, the whimsical, may be instantly produced in the most pleasing, surprising, and even laughable varieties.”


The instructions further note “it is hoped that the physiognomical apparatus here presented to the public will afford a very curious and almost inexhaustible fund for Lavaterian experiment.”

See also: John Ford, Rudolf Ackermann and the Regency World, 2018, p. 21.
See also: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2016/03/11/physogs/
and
https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2019/03/08/jeu-dovide/

Henry Martin’s Spots

What do you picture when you hear the word “book”? Henry Martin pictured hundreds of iconic images, which he delivered weekly to the offices of the New Yorker over dozens of years.

 

As various archives are making big news this week, our archive of Henry Martin’s drawings sits quietly in the vault, no salacious letters to uncover or celebrity photos. Martin, class of 1948, worked as a cartoonist and illustrator for more than forty-five years, publishing in the New Yorker, Ladies’ Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, and many other magazines. He also had a single-panel comic strip, “Good News/Bad News,” which was nationally syndicated.

Martin had his first drawing accepted at the New Yorker in April 1950, ten years before his first cartoon was accepted. The drawing was a “spot,” one of the tiny iconographic images that appear throughout the magazine. Many artists began this way, including his colleague Peter Arno, whose biography notes: “The first ever New Yorker spot drawing appeared on page three of the first issue—the template for one kind of spot that continued to appear in the magazine until 2005. The drawing, a rectangle at the bottom of the middle column on the Talk of the Town page, was unsigned and had the appearance of a woodcarving.”–Michael Maslin, Peter Arno (2016).

See Martin listed, alphabetically, with other celebrated cartoonists.

 

It is these drawings or “spots,” for which Martin is best represented in the magazine. A search of the New Yorker’s cartoon database reveals 188 cartoons while our archive of Martin’s drawings shows he made over 1,000 spots. “Books” is just one set from a series of boxes and envelopes. Unlike today’s New Yorker spots, there is no running gag or theme, just pure image. Here are a few more samples. Happy New Year.

 

The Chalk Plate process

Cartoons Magazine 4, Issue 4 (1913): 401-03

Beginning in 1885 (copyrighted 1888), wood engraving faced serious competition from a new reproductive process. No, not the Kodak camera. It was the chalk-plate process, or Hoke process, named after Joseph W. Hoke who developed a method of free-hand drawing on a chalk covered metal plate, which was then stereotyped and ready for printing in one or two hours, greatly decreasing the time needed to produce illustrations for breaking news stories and other daily newspaper work.

According to Anne Johnson’s 1914 Notable women of St. Louis, it was Hoke’s daughter and professional artist Martha Hoke (1861-1939) who produced the first and still most famous chalk-plate illustration of a murder victim discovered in a trunk, which she was able to sketch around 1:00 p.m. and the picture printed in the regular afternoon edition of the Post-Dispatch a few hours later.

Miss Martha Hoke… was the first person in St. Louis to make drawings for newspaper illustrations. Her father, Joseph W. Hoke, made a discovery in the line of engraving which he perfected by much experiment upon plates capable of producing, in a very short time, a type which could be set up with reading matter. This was the first successful engraving process using the artist’s drawing directly. Miss Hoke gave her father much assistance in the trial drawings necessary to perfect this method. All illustrations had, up to that time, been engraved on wood, or steel, or stone, or etched on copper. Mr. Hoke prepared a chalk composition, baked upon a steel plate, of such consistency that a drawing could readily be made by a pointed stylus bent at such an angle that when held as a pen or pencil the point would be vertical.

The drawing so made is placed in a stereotyping box and as a matrix it is cast in type metal. This type could be produced in a very short time. The possibilities for newspaper illustrations—which previous to that had been very meager and poor—were developed by an emergency, which at once placed this invention in great demand and general use. The event which so suddenly brought success financially was a murder at the Southern Hotel by a man named Maxwell, who hid the body of his victim, Preller, in a trunk which he left in a room he had occupied. The discovery of this brought out an extra edition of one of the daily papers, with a drawing by Miss Hoke. This famous case made chalk plates known to all newspapers everywhere.

Outside the big city papers, such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, many publishers could not afford to maintain a full photoengraving department and so, used chalk-plates for all their illustrations well into the twentieth century. Manuel Rosenberg included a chapter in his 1922 The Manuel Rosenberg Course in Newspaper Art entitled The Chalk Plate Method for the Artist in the Small Town. “Before the invention of the photoengraving process,” he writes, “the newspaper artist and the cartoonist usually used chalk plates. Today the chalk plate is practically a medium of the past. For small-town publications, however, it is often a more serviceable medium than the up-to-date photo-engraving process.”

As late as 1941, Popular Mechanics was suggesting chalk plates for cartoonist of high school newspapers [below] and offering a full-page description of the process complete with illustrations. (volume 75, no. 1, January 1941, p.117)


Many lengthy descriptions of the process have been published. One appeared in The Art Amateur: Devoted to Art in the Household 44, no. 6 (May 1901): 158, entitled “How to make chalk plates.”

The following is the method of producing on “chalk plates” such illustrations as are used for general newspaper work: A metal plate, covered with a coating of chalk about a sixteenth of an inch thick, is put into the hands of the draftsman. It should be the actual size of the illustration to be made. The draftsman draws upon the plate with a metal point or needle, like a shoemaker’s awl; every time he makes a line he removes the chalk from that part of the plate, and the exposing of the metal makes his drawing appear dark, contrasted with the whiteness, of the chalk. [In much the same way the etcher removes his etching ground from a copper plate with the etching needle; the etching ground, however, is wax, and it usually is darkened by smoking, so that, the copper of the plate being light, the drawing appears light upon a dark ground.]

When the artist has finished his drawing—which is really a scratching away of the chalk—the plate is handed to a stereotyper, who makes a stereotype of it. This is done in the following way: It is put into a casting box, not unlike an iron waffle pan, which when closed leaves an opening about one-fourth of an inch in front of the plate, and on the top of which there is an opening, into which the stereotyper pours liquid type metal, as a boy pours melted lead into a bullet mould. The metal fills the vacuum in front of the plate and runs into each gully or furrow which the draftsman’s needle point has made. Of course where the chalk has not been removed, the type metal does not go; when the metal is cold and the casting—box opened, we find a thin plate of metal where the lines rise to an even height, wherever the artist has scratched a line down to the metal plate; but the plate is lower wherever the unremoved chalk prevented the liquid touching the metal plate. This crust of type metal fastened to a block, so that it is type high, resembles a wood engraving or a photo-engraved plate, and serves the same purpose. When the inked rollers of the printing press go over it, they ink the raised lines only, which correspond to the lines the artist drew, and hence it prints just like type.

This method of making illustrations for the newspapers has great advantages and disadvantages. It has the advantage of cheapness, for the plates cost next to nothing, and when the castingbox is once bought the expense of type metal and the recoating of the plates is very slight. It is a very quick method also, as an artist can draw a portrait half an hour before the paper goes to press. His drawing may take fifteen minutes and the casting fifteen minutes more. In photo-engraving, the photographing and etching of the plate takes a couple of hours. The disadvantage of the method is that the artist must make his drawing the exact size it is to be printed, while for photo-engraving he usually works on a larger scale, which is not only easier for him, but when a drawing thus made is reduced it has a greater appearance of fineness and finish than a drawing made small. Then, too, the laying bare of the plate with a metal point, and raising a dust of chalk, which sometimes covers up the lines, is not as pleasant a way of working—does not seem as natural as drawing with a pen on Bristol board. In pen drawing. also, more pressure on the pen turns a thin line into a thick one; in the chalk-plate process, to thicken a line you either have to go over it several times, removing chalk on its sides, or else use a larger instrument than you used for the fine lines.”

See also: R.M.A., “Stereotyping Chalk Plates,” The Inland Printer 28, no. 2 (November 1901): 194-96.

Note, chalk-plates should not be confused with chalk manner engraving from the eighteenth century. https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000020168

Neither should it be confused with relief line block printing, a technique that uses a negative of a line drawing being contact printed onto a photosensitized metal plate. Light hardens this emulsion into an acid resist while non-exposed areas are washed away in warm water. When etched in a bath of acid the metal surrounding the emulsion protected lines is eaten away forming a low relief, which can be printed as any relief matrix.

A Bouquet of the Last Century


James Gillray (1756-1815), A Bouquèt of the last Century. – t’was thus, heretofore, honest Dames shew’d their Faces, / When Ball Nights & Birth Nights, call’d forth all their Graces! – / But now, (-las-a-day!) what with Wigs and with Vails, / Our Fair Ones, hide Faces, and all, – but their Tails!, February 1, 1802. Hand colored etching and aquatint. Graphic Arts Collection GAX

Dorothy George wrote “An elderly lady sits very upright in a glass-fronted coupé, the side window forming a frame. She has simply-dressed powdered hair on which is a turban-like drapery; a fichu covers her neck. Her dress, in front of which is a large bouquet of flowers, is shaped to the waist in a way very different from the fashion of the day.”–Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum, VIII, 1947. George identified the lady as the Dowager Lady Dacre (Mary, née Fludyer, 1755-1808, widow of the 18th Baron Dacre (d. 1794) whose tomb she is said to have visited daily.

After the death of her husband, Lady Dacre inherited Lee Place in Kent, as well as a share in the estates of Trevalyn Hall and Plas Teg in Flintshire. Agreements among the heirs resulted in Lady Dacre’s full ownership of the Plas Teg estate (near Hope, Flintshire) by 1799. …Of her life at her principal residence at Lee Place, “It is reported that the widow visited his tomb, at Lee, near Blackheath, daily, until her decease in 1818 [sic]. She usually rode from her mansion to the Churchyard on a favourite pony, wore a large flapping drab beaver hat, and cloth habit trailing to the ground. At home, she evinced an eccentric reverence for her deceased husband; his chair was placed, as in his lifetime, at the dinner table, and the unfilled seat seemed to feed her melancholy*.”–“Some Account of the Citizens of London and Their Rulers, from 1060 to 1867” p. 154, Benjamin Brogden Orridge, 1867.

See more: https://plasteg.com/index.php/history/

 

t’was thus, heretofore, honest Dames shew’d their Faces,
When Ball Nights & Birth Nights, call’d forth all their Graces! –
But now, (-las-a-day!) what with Wigs and with Vails,
Our Fair Ones, hide Faces, and all, – but their Tails! –

An American Rasputin

Reproduced in Henry Vincent, The story of the Commonweal: Complete and graphic narrative of the origin and growth of the movement (Chicago: W. B. Conkey company, 1894).

[left Carl Browne as Christ]

The Los Angeles Times called Carl Browne a blackmailer, liar, fraud, swindler and editor [who descended as] a swarm of devouring locust on the rapidly flourishing city of Los Angeles.” Elsewhere he is simply labeled a charismatic cartoonist or P.T. Barnum with a pen. What are we to make of this artist who obtained national stature, both good and bad?

Additional material on Carl Dryden Browne (1849–1914) is being collected for an extended article, especially pre-1894. Thank you for your help.

“The members of the Bimetallic Convention* at Chicago must feel greatly flattered at the presence in their midst of that inexpressible fraud and fakir [sic], Carl Browne, who yesterday “shot off his mouth” to the extent of several hundred words of Associated Press report. This long-haired, bearskin-coated freak of nature, who calls himself an artist, because he, in common with monkeys and children, has the ability to deface white paper with black lead—which he does in a manner that would disgrace a first-grade pupil—has organized a league of some sort, to be run of course, for revenue only. Since he dealt out nauseous taffy to the Southern Pacific Company in one of his disreputable sheets—which should have been impounded for pubic soliciting—he has resided on a comfortable ranch in Napa county. A nice [?] sort of a character this, to champion the cause of the down-trodden people! The silverites ought to purge themselves of such cattle as Carl Browne if they desire to retain the respect of the people.–“Carl Browne” Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1893.

[*The American Bimetallic League, founded by silver mine owners in 1889, perfected a national organization in 1892, took on a wider pubic membership during the depression of 1893 and organized massive public meetings across the country throughout the next three years. –Daniel Klinghard, The Nationalization of American Political Parties, 1880–1896 (2010)]

Gillray’s portrait of a traitor

James Gillray (1756-1815), Evidence to character; Being a portrait of a traitor, by his friends & by himself, October 1, 1798. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection. First published in Anti-Jacobin Review, September 1798, p.285 [above] then issued as a separate print. [below]

On 27th February 1798 [Arthur O’Connor] and his friend Rev. James O’Coigley… with Binns, Allen, and Leary, were arrested at Margate, on their way to France, on a supposed mission from the United Irishmen. In O’Connor’s baggage were found a military uniform, £900 in cash, and the key to a cipher correspondence with Lord Edward FitzGerald. …
O’Coigley, who was sentenced to death, and executed on Pennington Heath…O’Connor…was transferred to Dublin and committed to Newgate.
…The examination of O’Connor and his fellow-prisoners before select committees of the Irish Lords and Commons throws the fullest light upon the origin and progress of the movement that led to the Insurrection of 1798.–https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/ArthurOConnor.php

Rather than caricature current events, here James Gillray merely transcribed the testimony at the trial of Arthur O’Connor (1763-1852) on May 22, 1798 at Maidstone. Extracts were published in damaging juxtaposition in Wright’s pamphlet, Evidence to Character; or, the Innocent Imposture: being … [ut supra] [below]. The introduction concludes: ‘It is not often that such Information as this can be obtained for the Public, from the Parties themselves on Oath.’

Lord Carlisle wrote: “If there is a lower political hell than any we before have witnessed, I think the opposition have found it out for themselves, by their connection with O’Connor and such worthies.” Auckland Corr.’ iv. 52.

In Gillray’s print O’Connor stands at the bar making a confession which, though condensed, does not differ substantially from that made by him, McNevin, and Emmet, published in the Report of the Secret Committee made to the Irish House of Commons on 21 Aug. “I confess, that I became an United Irishman in 1796 & a Member of the National Executive, from 1796, to 1798. …”

The witnesses include Fox: “I swear that he is perfectly well affected to his Country, – a Man totally without dissimulation – i know his principles are the principles of the Constitution”. (Fox said: “I always thought Mr O’Connor to be perfectly well affected to his country . . . attached to the principles and the constitution of this country, upon which the present family sit upon the throne, and to which we owe all our liberties.”

Next stands Sheridan: “I know him intimately; – I treated him, & he treated me, with Confidence! – & I Swear, that, I never met with any man, so determined against encouraging French Assistance”. The last words resemble those of Sheridan, with the significant omission ‘in this country’.

Next is Erskine: “His friends, are all MY friends! and I therefore, feel MYSELF intitled upon MY Oath, to say, that he is incapable, in MY judgement, of acting with treachery, & upon MY oath, I never had any reason to think that his principles differed from MY own so help ME god” Though abbreviated, this is only very slightly burlesqued.

Next is the Duke of Norfolk: “I consider him attached to constitutional principles, in the Same way as myself”. His evidence ended ‘I consider him as a gentleman acting warmly in the political line and attached to . . . [ut supra]”.

The trial of O’Connor, with O’Coigley and others, at Maidstone is combined with the proceedings in Dublin after the Irish Rebellion. For the confessions see ‘Report from the Committee of Secrecy of the House of Commons in Ireland’, 21 Aug. 1798, Appendix xxxi. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008586460

Monsieur Francois introduces Master Pr***tly to the National Assembly

Johann J. Beecher believed in a substance called phlogiston. When a substance is burned, phlogiston was supposedly added from the air to the flame of the burning object. In some substances, a product is produced. For example, calx of mercury plus phlogiston gives the product of mercury.

Joseph Priestley heated calx of mercury, collected the colorless gas and burned different substances in this colorless gas. Priestley called the gas “dephlogisticated air” but it was actually oxygen. It was Antoine Lavoisier who disproved the Phlogiston Theory. He renamed the “dephlogisticated air” oxygen when he realized that the oxygen was the part of air that combines with substances as they burn. Because of Lavoisier’s work, Lavoisier is now called the “Father of Modern Chemistry”.–http://www.columbia.edu/itc/chemistry/chem-c2507/navbar/chemhist.html

James Sayers (1748-1823), Monsieur Francois introduces Master Pr…tly to the National Assembly, June 18, 1792. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process.

In July 1791, while living in Birmingham, Dr Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) and his friends arranged to have a celebratory dinner on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. British rioters gathered outside the hotel and attacked attendees as they left. Priestley and his wife escaped but their home was burned down and their possession destroyed. The Priestleys eventually settled in Hackney, where he gave a series of lectures on history and natural philosophy. Read more: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/methods1/priestley1/priestley.html

 

Multiple British caricatures were published against Priestley, making life in England became more and more difficult. On June 8, 1792, his son William was presented to the French Assembly and granted letters of naturalization. Dr. Priestley was granted French citizenship in August and in September, elected to the French National Convention although he declined the position. Ultimately, he and his family left England for the United States.

Sayers’s print is set inside the hall of the French National Assembly, whose members are depicted with animal heads. On the top left Nicolas Louis François de Neufchâteau (1750-1828) pulls the strings attached to William Priestley as he is presented to the Assembly. Young Priestley holds an electrical rod to shock the Assembly members sending sparks into a jar inscribed “Phlogiston from Hackney College.”

For more about Priestley and dephlogisticated air, see: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/josephpriestleyoxygen.html

Visit Priestley House in Northumberland, PA: http://www.josephpriestleyhouse.org/

 

See also James Gillray, A Birmingham toast, as given on the 14th of July, by the Revolution Society, 1791. Dr. Priestley seen standing to give the toast.

Vorstellung der Köpf Maschiene in Paris

Johann Martin Will (1727 -1806), Vorstellung der Kopf Maschiene in Paris. Vermöge welcher in einer viertelstund 25 Personen könen enthauptet werden [Representation of the Head Machine by which 25 persons can be beheaded every quarter of an hour] [Augsburg: Johann Martin Will], 1792. Etching with engraving, engraved text in German and French. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019-in process

This unsigned satire of the French guillotine has been attributed to Augsburg-based printer/publisher Johann Martin Will, imagining a machine that will kill 25 people every 15 minutes. Parts are numbered in a scientific manner. Several victims are depicted, before and after, with heads and bodies scattered throughout. On the right, a “certified priest” walks both men and women prisoners towards the apparatus while on the left the audience includes children.

To make sure the viewer understands the import of the scene, the second column of text decries the horrors of the guillotine and of the current popular delusions: “… Oh woe to the people who strives to win freedom in such a manner, who invents such machines, steaming with human blood…. All who make sane use of their reason must despair.”

The Living Skeleton


Claude Ambroise Seurat. Description intéressante de Claude-Ambroise Seurat appelé l’homme anatomique, ou le squelette vivant par M. le Comte Joseph de Cissé [Douai: Wagrez, n.d., soon after 1828]. Woodcut frontispiece.  Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

 

“A few words may here be said with regard to the individuals occasionally exhibited at Shows and Fairs, and known popularly as “Living Skeletons,” for in some of them it is probable that we have to do with a congenital absence of the subcutaneous fat which has persisted till adult life. …In 1826, Claude Ambroise Seurat, the so called ” Anatomie Vivante,” or ” Living Skeleton,” was exhibited in the Chinese Saloon, Pall Mall, London, and in other towns of the United Kingdom. He was then 26 years of age, about five feet and a half in height, and showed such a markedly atrophic state of the subcutaneous fat, and to some extent of the muscular system also, as fully to justify the designation “Living Skeleton,” which was popularly applied to him.

In one of the newspapers of the time the following statement occurs :*—” His father and his stepmother are both with him, and if we credit their account, he was brought into the world thus afflicted, grew to his present height at fourteen years old, and has never had a day’s illness in his life.” His parents, however, do not seem to have been very clear about the congenital character of the anomaly, for in another account, written for some paper by a medical man, the following sentence occurs: “According to the statement of his father (the mother is dead), he presented nothing extraordinary in his appearance at the time of birth; though, in my own mind, I have no doubt but the same malformation was existent then, which is so apparent now.”

One of the advertisements with regard to this man reads thus:—”Anatomie Vivante, Or Living Skeleton.—This extraordinary production of Nature has been examined by many of the most eminent of the Faculty in France and in England, who pronounce him a great phenomenon. He has been brought to this country at a considerable expence [sic], in the confident hope that he will contribute to the advancement of science. He is 28 years of age, in good health, and has from his birth resembled a Skeleton, although he has attained an enlargement of bone equal to any of his age.—The Faculty and the Public are invited to view so unparalleled a Being, who will be exhibited on TUESDAY next, 9th inst, at the Chinese Saloon, 94 Pall Mall.— Hours of exhibition from 10 to 1, and from 2 to 6.—Admission, 2s. 66.” — John William Ballantyne, The Diseases and deformities of the fœtus, v. 2 (1895)

 


Avez-vous peur des revenants ?
Belles, voyez l’homme squelette :
Ses bras, de forme d’allumette,
Ne sont rien moins qu’entreprenans.
Dans une machine aussi frêle
Un grand sens trouve à se loger ;
Pour montrer qu’à l’âme immortelle
Notre corps est presqu’étranger.

 

See also various caricature by Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856), The Living Skeleton, September 1825. Hand colored etching. Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library. Historical Library