These postcards are from a series called "Les Humoristes de Jadis” (Comedians of Yesteryear).
They show illustrations by two famous 19th century French caricaturists : Honoré Daumier and Paul Gavarni.
Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808 - 1879) was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century.
He was born in Marseille on 26 February 1808 and moved with his mother to join his father in Paris in 1816. In 1822, he became protégé to Alexandre Lenoir, who was an artist and archaeologist and a friend of Daumier's father. The following year Daumier entered the Académie Suisse. He also worked for a lithographer and publisher named Belliard.
Having mastered the techniques of lithography, Daumier began his artistic career by producing plates for music publishers and illustrations for advertisements. This was followed by anonymous work for publishers, in which he emulated the style of Charlet and displayed considerable enthusiasm for the Napoleonic legend. After the revolution of 1830 he created art which expressed his political beliefs.
Daumier was almost blind by 1873 and died in Valmondois in the Val-d'Oise department in Île-de-France in northern France on 10 February 1879.
(Ref: Article in Wikipedia - accessed 1-2–20)
Paul Gavarni (1804 - 1866) was the nom de plume of Sulpice Guillaume Chevalier, a French illustrator, born in Paris on 13 January 1804.
Gavarni began work in a machine factory, but he took classes in drawing. He devoted his special attention to architectural and mechanical drawing and worked at land surveying and mapping which led to his obtaining a position with the Government Ordnance Department as a draughtsman. It wasn't until his early thirties that he turned his attention to his vocation as an artist.
Gavarni’s first published drawings were for the magazine Journal des Modes. Most of his best work appeared in Le Charivari after he had been invited by the editor, François Caboche, to draw for the magazine.
Some of his most scathing and most earnest pictures, the fruit of a visit to London in 1849, appeared in L'Illustration. He also illustrated Honoré de Balzac's novels, and Eugène Sue's Wandering Jew.
He died on 24 November 1866.
(Ref: Article in Wikipedia - accessed 1-2–20)
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