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L'amour croise des races. (Agence Matrimoniale)

Grandville (Jean-Ignace-Everard Gérard)

1834
Sold
Grandville's preparatory watercolour sketch for the print 'L'amour croise des races. (Agence matrimoniale)' published in Le Charivari, January 9th, 1834; the watercolour differs only very slightly from the published image but the changes - the closing of the beak of the figure on the right of the image, the closer grouping of all three figures and the difference in the text on the poster at right: 'Traitement de la gourme' in the watercolour version, 'Joconde ou les courures d'aventure' in the final version - all suggest that the watercolour preceded the published version.

The published version also features the caption: 'Ici on fait luire le flambeau de l'hyménée dans toutes les classes de la société. Assortiment varié de vieux célibataires, de vielles douairières, de fils de famille, etc. etc. Zèle, discrétion, loyauté et bon gout.'

Le Charivari, founded and published by Philipon and Aubert, was a daily newspaper which first appeared in 1832. Like La Caricature, Le Charivari featured the work of Daumier and Grandville - Grandville contributed nearly forty images in the first few years of publication - but was, at least in its initial form, less controversial. It was also a means for Philipon and Aubert to offset some of the financial losses they accrued from the fines imposed by the government for their more political publications. Unlike La Caricature, Le Charivari continued daily publication throughout the nineteenth-century and into the twentieth-century. In 1936 it switched to a weekly format before ceasing publication the following year.

[PROVENANCE: By descent from Louise Fischer, sister of Henriette, Grandville's wife].

[see Sell, Grandville Das Gesammte Werk 256].
Watercolour over sepia ink with areas of highlight in black ink, annotations to verso in pencil and purple collector's stamp, mounted to larger sheet of stiff card. (Image size: 155 x 185 mm; sheet size: 325 x 380 mm).
#38801