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Debiteurs et Créanciers
Paris: Aubert & Cie., 1837. Item #06685
A Superb Composite Album of Hand-Colored Parisian Social Satire
Frédéric Bouchot’s Comic Theater of Debt, Romance, Carnival, and Bourgeois Folly
in July Monarchy Paris
BOUCHOT, Frédéric. Débiteurs et Créanciers; Contributions indirectes; Après le carnaval; Les Malheurs d'un amant heureux; together with Les embellissements de Paris and Trop tôt. Paris: Aubert & Cie; Lemercier, Bernard, et Cie, [ca. 1837–1840s].
Large quarto (13 3/4 x 10 1/4 inches; 350 x 260 mm.). A remarkable composite album consisting almost entirely of seventy original lithographic suites by the French caricaturist and lithographer Frédéric Bouchot (1798–after 1850), the majority finely hand-colored and several heightened with gum arabic.
All of the plates are mounted on cards of varying sizes, several on contemporary newspaper leaves with printed text versos preserved, including Les Débiteurs et les créanciers, plates 1, 6, 8 and 11, and Contributions indirectes, plate 9. Two plates from Les embellissements de Paris retained on unmounted newspaper leaves (numbers 9 & 11). Several leaves detached, including all of Trop tôt; stubs from cancels between Les embellissements de Paris and Trop tôt. Marginal tear to Trop tôt, plate 4, affecting border and printer’s imprint. Some browning, foxing, and occasional damp-staining throughout, largely marginal.
Bound ca. 1900 in ochre cloth over floral patterned boards, spine with black morocco label lettered in gilt. Contemporary etched bookplate of a dog on front pastedown. Manuscript table of contents in blue crayon and pencil on front endpaper. A highly evocative and visually striking survival in excellent condition.
The album contains:
Les Débiteurs et les créanciers: 12 plates, all hand-colored. (Plates 1, 6, 8 & 11 are the original periodical issues with text on verso)
Contributions indirectes: 20 plates, hand-colored except plate no. 10. (Plate 9 is the original periodical issue with text on verso)
Après le carnaval: 7 (of 12?) plates, nos. 1, 3, 5, 5*, 7, 8, and 12, all hand-colored.
Les Malheurs d’un amant heureux: 12 plates, all hand-colored.
Les embellissements de Paris: 12 plates, six hand-colored (1, 2, 3, 5, 7 & 12) and six monochrome (4, 6, 8, 9, 10 & 11) Plates 9 & 11 are the original periodical issues with text on verso)
Trop tôt: 7 plates (plate no. 7 numbered “9”); plates nos. 3 and 9 in monochrome.
A fascinating and unusually extensive gathering of Parisian lithographic satire from the great age of illustrated caricature under the July Monarchy. Though overshadowed today by contemporaries such as Daumier and Gavarni, Frédéric Bouchot was among the keenest observers of bourgeois absurdity, urban vanity, romantic humiliation, and the endless social theatre of everyday Parisian life.
Issued originally as ephemeral satirical prints and magazine supplements - many through the great caricature publisher Aubert & Cie and associated with the world of Le Charivari - these suites were seldom intended to survive. The present album, assembled by a contemporary collector, preserves a remarkable body of material in richly hand-colored form.
The finest and rarest suite present is undoubtedly Les Débiteurs et les créanciers, complete in 12 hand-colored plates. Bouchot mercilessly satirizes creditors and their increasingly inventive efforts to extract payment from affluent but evasive debtors: tailors, hairdressers, hatters, jewelers, furniture dealers, boot-makers, and moneylenders all appear as comic antagonists in the financial melodrama of bourgeois Paris. One memorable plate depicts a delirious customer engaged in a tug-of-war with his boot-maker over a pair of boots, while quoting the mad Charles VI proclaiming war against tyrants.
Equally inventive, Contributions indirectes transforms taxation into social allegory, parodying the hidden “costs” attached to everyday existence. Among the absurd levies depicted are the “Impôt nourricier,” consisting of a baby’s first tooth owed to the wet nurse, and the “Impôt moral,” exacted upon a gentleman at a ball who is forced to dance with neglected ladies.
Après le carnaval explores the melancholy collapse of illusion after masquerade festivities, exposing the desperate and often pathetic realities hidden beneath carnival costume.
In Les Malheurs d’un amant heureux, Bouchot turns to romantic farce worthy of Balzac: the unfortunate lover hides in wardrobes, is shot by gardeners, and ultimately compelled to pay 12,000 francs to secure marriage to his beloved.
The satirical urbanism of Les embellissements de Paris is particularly delightful, ridiculing both Parisian civic “improvements” and the naïve tourists who admire them - including public urinals romantically titled “colonnes moresques” and the notorious elephant monument at the Bastille.
Finally, Trop tôt develops an extended visual pun on unfortunate timing, from suspiciously premature childbirth to overconfident ice skaters taking a “free bath” before winter properly arrives.
Composite albums of hand-colored French satirical lithographs from this period are now rarely encountered, especially preserving multiple complete suites in contemporary color. The survival of ephemeral newspaper mounts, varied paper stocks, and period compilation structure gives this volume unusual documentary importance alongside its considerable decorative and artistic appeal.
A vivid and highly entertaining panorama of Parisian society during the golden age of French caricature.
Price: $8,500.00