Charles Philipon  

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Charles Philipon (19 April 1800 – 25 January 1861). Born in Lyon, he was a French lithographer, caricaturist and journalist. He was the editor of the La Caricature and of Le Charivari, both satirical political journals. He is famous for The Pears.

He began his career in Paris during the summer of 1824 as a lithographer and part-time caricaturist. In the fall of 1829 he became a publisher and editor in an effort to save his family from financial destitution. He set up a printselling business with his brother-in-law, Gabriel Aubert. Using a stock of two caricatures drawn by Philipon and a handful of lithographs from printsellers he worked for, they rented a small boutique on the Passage Véro-Dodat and established La Maison Aubert. As the growing business demanded increasing amounts of time, Philipon gradually sacrificed his artistic career.

La Silhouette

In October 1829 Philipon launched a career in journalism as a co-founder of La Silhouette. He made a minor financial investment and became a contributor without final editorial control. La Silhouette was the first French newspaper to regularly publish prints and illustrations, giving them equal or greater importance than the written text. Each issue satirized political and literary events of the day and included lithographs by the best-known graphic artists in Paris.

La Silhouette was published from December 24, 1829 to January 2, 1831. It became the prototype for similar publications published in France throughout the 19th century. La Silhouette was initially known as a moderate journal in a time of intense political debate. Some of the staff had been jailed for publishing works critical of the government while others held more conservative views. Over time, the publication's editorial sympathies became increasingly liberal.

Strict government censorship prevented La Silhouette from publishing caricatures aimed directly at politicians – except for a small woodcut of the king (Charles X of France) by Philipon that was surreptitiously inserted within the text of the April 1, 1830 issue. The newspaper had never included engravings in this way before and it was overlooked by the censors who were concentrating on the issues's lithographs. The publication caused a scandal – with an intensity that reflected the rarity of political caricature before the Revolution – and the editor was eventually sentenced to six months in prison and fined 1,000 francs. Philipon, who had carefully left the caricature unsigned, escaped the scandal's repercussions.

The censors were circumvented in later issues when the editors wrote bitterly critical partisan commentaries and attached them to seemingly innocuous images. In the May and June issues of 1830, this tactic was used to address a variety of political themes through a series of animal scenes by J. J. Grandville (Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard). In an issue that immediately preceded the July Revolution, Honoré Daumier contributed a non-specific battlefield image that was given an explicit political message by an editor.

He was the director of the satirical political newspapers La Caricature and of Le Charivari which included lithographs by some of France's leading caricaturists including J.J. Grandville (Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard), Honoré Daumier, Paul Gavarni, C.J. Traviés, Benjamin and others. The artists would often illustrate Philipon's themes to create some of France's earliest political cartoons.

He died in Paris at the age of 61.

De la caricature politique à la satire de moeurs (après 1835)

Si les "lois de septembre" marquent la fin de la caricature politique dans sa version "véhémente", Philipon n'en reste pas moins actif. Outre la reparution de La Caricature devenue La Caricature provisoire (1838), appelée aussi la "Caricature non politique", il publie dans Le Charivari la série des Robert Macaire (1836-1838), le Musée pour rire : dessins pour tous les caricaturistes de Paris (1839-1840), Le Musée ou magasin comique de Philipon (1843), Paris comique (1844), Le Journal pour rire (1848-1855), devenu Le Journal amusant (1856), où le comique procède essentiellement de la satire de moeurs.

Le but de cette "bibliothèque pour rire" est de distraire et d'amuser à travers la création de "types sociaux" représentatifs, les physiologies, très prisées par le public. Les types les plus emblématiques furent illustrés notamment par Daumier (Ratapoil, Robert Macaire), Traviès (M.Mayeux), Henry Monnier (Joseph Prudhomme), Gavarni (Thomas Vireloque). La vogue des physiologies fut propice à la Maison Aubert : de février 1841 à août 1842, elle publia trente-deux physiologies différentes représentant les trois quarts de la production dans cette période.

Pour autant, il n'est pas toujours facile de démêler la satire sociale de la satire politique. A cet égard, la série des Robert Macaire est hautement significative. Composée et dessinée par Daumier sur les idées et légendes de Philipon, l'ensemble est réuni en volume sous le titre Les Cent et un Robert Macaire (1839). Les grands dessins sont réduits et accompagnés d'un texte comique et explicatif rédigé par les journalistes Maurice Alhoy et Louis Huart. Présenté emphatiquement comme un avatar de Don Quichotte et de Gil Blas, le personnage de Robert Macaire[1], en binôme avec le naïf Bertrand, incarne sous ses facettes et rôles multiples un type social caractérisé par le terme de "floueur", maître en filouterie en tous genres et emblème d'une société dominée par l'intérêt et l'affairisme (Marx se référera à Louis-Philippe comme à "Robert Macaire sur son trône"). Cette "haute comédie" qui offre de la société une image particulièrement cynique et impitoyable n'est pas sans rappeler la Comédie humaine de Balzac, dont elle serait en quelque sorte le pendant pour la caricature.

Dans cette même période, Philipon publie également Le Floueur (1850), première série de la Bibliothèque pour rire, le Musée anglo-français (1855-1857) en collaboration avec Gustave Doré, Aux prolétaires (avec Agénor Altaroche, 1838) et Parodie du Juif errant (avec Louis Huart, 1845), inspirée par l'oeuvre d'Eugène Sue.