Charles Philipon

Charles Philipon (19 April 1800 – 25 January 1861) was a French lithographer, caricaturist and journalist. He was the founder and director of the satirical political journals '' La Caricature'' and of ''Le Charivari''.

Early life

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 organization 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 April 1, 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 ommercialwar" (Ch. Lèdre).

Birth of a business

After the revolution of July 1830, Philipon published on November 4 of 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).Desnoyers, Altaroche, Cler, un critique d'art et deux critiques littéraires. David S.Kerr, ''Caricature and French political culture 1830-1848'', Clarendon Press, 2000, p. 30.

The testimony of his contemporaries emphasizes 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.

Rise to prominence (1830–1835)

Campaign against Louis-Philippe (1830–1832)

In the fall of 1830 Philipon, as supporter of the Revolution of July, expected much of the new regime. The first issues of ''La Caricature'' contained no political charges. Chief editor and friend of Philipon, Balzac, contributed extensively in this period, signing his articles under various pseudonyms. Anti-clericalism, already present in ''La Silhouette'', persistently manifested itself in both texts and illustrations. The memory of Napoleon still lived.

However, the tone changed in late December 1830 to early 1831, when the law of December 4, 1830 that restored stamp duty and censorship of newspapers was criticized by the magazine. The caricatures then maintained their political and satirical character as the new regime became increasingly authoritarian, upending the "age of consensus." According to Philipon, caricatures increased the important influence of artists, as had been the case in England for a long time, exposing "the enemies of our liberties."

Philipon expressed his disaffection for the regime in a cartoon, ''Foam of July'', published by Maison Aubert (26 February 1831). Better known as ''The soap bubbles'', it shows Louis-Philippe carelessly blowing bubbles that show the unfulfilled promises of freedom of the press, popular elections, mayors elected by the people, no more sinecures etc.
Prosecuted for insulting the king, Philipon would be acquitted eventually. He reoffended a few months later with another lithograph, known as ''The Cosmetic repair'' (''La Caricature'', June 30, 1831), in which the king is represented as a mason, symbolically erasing the traces of the July Revolution. He was again tried by the Assize Court.

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 Miserables'' 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

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