PAUL GAVARNI

Gavarni, Paul, [pseudonym of Guillaume-Sulpice Chevalier] [from OCWA]

(1804-1866).

French caricaturist who, as a satirist of French bourgeois life, has few equals. He worked initially as an industrial draughtsman but from 1828 he earned his living in Paris with drawings of costumes for dressmakers and the theatre. From 1837, when he began to contribute to Le Charivari, he specialized in the humorous drawings of social manners for which he is famous (Fourberies de femmes en matière de sentiment, 1837-41; Le Carnaval, 1846). He visited England from 1847 to 1851, where he studied the life of the poor and, in a series of plates, Gavarni in London (1849), graphically contrasted it with that of the rich. From this moment the benign irony of the earlier works gave way to a more trenchant satire with political implications, embodied in the character of Thomas Vireloque (Les Propos de Thomas Vireloque, 1851-3). His work moves from caricature to a comedy of manners, and depicts with profound cynicism the miseries of the 1840s.

Helen Langdon

© Oxford University Press 2007