Touring French History through Political Cartoons

The following is a guest post by Woody Woodis, Cataloger, Prints and Photographs Division

Today, in honor of Bastille Day, or La Fête Nationale, marking the beginning of the French Revolution, we feature highlights from the French Political Cartoon Collection. This small but exemplary collection of 365 prints spans almost two centuries and touches on every aspect of French political culture from Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, to Napoleon III, the last emperor to rule France. The Library of Congress obtained the prints from a variety of sources; many came as part of a substantial purchase of the Windsor Library collection in 1926.

Suggesting the conditions the led to revolution, Calendrier royal indiquant le cours du soleil (1706) shows Louis XIV sitting on a crude throne at the center of the sun whose rays are filled with text that often present the low-lights of his reign; in the upper left corner, reference to the eclipse of 1705 further casts a shadow on the dimming light of the Sun King’s final years.

Commemorating the storming of the Bastille in July 1789, Adieu Bastille (ca. 1789) presents the rise of the peasantry as an enormous, imposing figure who treats the aristocracy and the clergy as figures in a child’s game, while in the background,  workers dismantle the Bastille.

Pariser Poisarden (ca. 1794) illustrates the role of women during the insurrectionary days of the French Revolution. Here a Parisian fishwife strides forward, hand-in-hand with a young, aristocratic woman, possibly an early Marianne figure, driven by a menacing harpy representing the anger and violence of working class women.

In France, censorship of the press was a major issue throughout the 19^th century, Descente dans les ateliers de la liberté de la presse (1833) is a good example of the extent to which the king and his officials went to silence the criticism from the press, here Louis-Phillippe, himself, is shown stopping the mouth of the printer.

Descriptions are available online for all of the prints in the collection and nearly half have been digitized. So while some may be following the Tour de France in real time this month, here’s an opportunity to take a visual tour of a tumultuous period of French history.

Learn More:

• View all the digitized images from the French Political Cartoon Collection, and read descriptions of the prints that have not been digitized.
• Browse images relating to the French Revolution from other Prints & Photographs Division collections.
• Explore a list of satire and cartoon collections in the Library of Congress and elsewhere.