Cham

ref. 06847 — Paris: Chez Aubert 1850. Thirty Hilarious Lithographs of French Garrison Life by Cham A Remarkably Fresh Copy in the Original Pictorial Boards CHAM illustrator pseud. of Charles Amédée de Noé. Souvenirs de Garnison et des plaisirs attachés à la chose. Paris: Chez Aubert n.d. ca. 1850. First edition. Large oblong quarto 10 x 12 7/8 inches; 254 x 327 mm. Pictorial lithographed title and thirty fine comical lithographed plates each with printed caption below. Publisher's original green paper-covered boards front cover with a large lithographed pictorial design printed in black and red reproducing the title-page composition. Slight wear to lower two inches of front joint and a little minor rubbing and wear to extremities; internally remarkably clean and fresh. An exceptional survival near fine. A wonderfully entertaining album of military caricatures by Cham Charles Amédée de Noé 1818-1879 one of the most prolific and popular French caricaturists of the nineteenth century. The thirty lithographs mercilessly lampoon the pleasures - and considerably more numerous discomforts - of French garrison life. Officers and soldiers appear on parade at inspections and military exercises enduring the boredom of provincial postings and finding various means of amusing themselves when relieved of their duties. Cham's captions provide the punch lines while his wonderfully economical draughtsmanship captures the absurdities of military hierarchy discipline uniforms and social pretension. Among the scenes are a soldier presenting an enormous bearskin to an officer; another dejectedly reflecting upon the seven years and seven months remaining before his discharge; and a wonderfully energetic cavalry inspection in which a mounted officer hurtles past his superior while declaring that he has difficulty following the commander's advice to remain firmly seated in the saddle. Born Charles Amédée de Noé Cham adopted his celebrated pseudonym as a contraction of his Christian name and a playful allusion to the biblical Ham Cham in French. After studying under Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet and Paul Delaroche he abandoned painting for caricature and became one of the defining comic draughtsmen of nineteenth-century France. His long association with Le Charivari placed him in the company of Honoré Daumier with whom he shared an extraordinary ability to expose the absurdities of contemporary French life. The present album belongs to the great flowering of French lithographic caricature in the decades following the July Monarchy. Published by Aubert the Parisian house intimately associated with La Caricature and Le Charivari and with such artists as Daumier Grandville and Gavarni these albums were essentially deluxe gatherings of topical visual humor intended for a contemporary audience. Their ephemeral nature and large oblong format made them particularly vulnerable to wear handling and disbinding. Copies retaining their original pictorial boards and with the lithographs as clean and fresh as those in the present example are consequently especially desirable. A superb example of Cham's wonderfully irreverent military satire - thirty comic lithographs of the trials tribulations and dubious "pleasures" of French garrison life preserved in unusually fresh condition in the striking original pictorial boards. Paris: Chez Aubert, 1850 unknown