Sunday, February 22, 2015

Richard Wagner en caricatures

John Grand-Carteret - Richard Wagner en caricatures (1892)

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A companion to the last post of Courbet caricatures.  This book is more a study of Wagner iconography and covers his signatures, musical manuscripts, portraits and cartoons of public reaction to his work.  If nothing else it's a reminder of just how discordant contemporary audiences found the music (the Paris premiere of Lohengrin seems to have been particularly contentious or at least maybe that's just the impression of all the critical images included here - though the "Triumph of Art" added below wouldn't have been out of place as a Napoleonic portrait).

The author Grand-Carteret did numerous similar books that seem promising, including ones on Zola, the Dreyfus Affair, letter writing, anti-clericism, German women (La femme en Allemagne), Louis XVI era dresses, French caricatures of the British (John Bull sur la sellette, something like John Bull on the Hot Seat) and "gallants".  There was even a 1907 book about homosexuality in Germany which was reprinted in 1992 but doesn't appear to be online.