THE caricaturist, his fingers still blotched with ink from the drawing demonstration he had given the court, turned to the jury. He smiled, with mischief dancing in his eyes, and asked theatrically,
"Is it my fault if His Majesty looks like a pear?"
Charles Philipon was a French lithographer, caricaturist, and journalist in the first half of the 19th century, who frequently fell foul of the humourless authorities. He founded the satirical and political journal La Caricature in 1830. But it was a troubled and short-lived publication, largely due to a flurry of legal actions, and the government finally suppressed it in 1835.
Earlier, in 1832, Philipon had established a daily newspaper entitled Le Charivari, which carried a new caricature in each edition. This became the model for the British satirical magazine Punch, which was subtitled The London Charivari. His influence on French caricature was profound, and he helped to turn the medium of lithography into a big deal, both commercially and artistically.
Philipon was put on trial for lampooning royalty in 1831. He argued that caricaturists shouldn't be punished because any object could be made to look like his nation’s king. In a gutsy move, and to illustrate his point to the courtroom, he drew King Louis-Philippe's face morphing into a pear. This was seen as a doubly disrespectful in many circles because the French word for pear was also a nickname for a fool or dullard. Remarkably, though, Philipon’s courtroom shtick worked, and he was acquitted of defamation.
British caricaturists enjoyed considerably more license than their continental counterparts. James Gillray, for instance, once drew Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger as a mushroom growing out of the ‘decaying’ monarchy. A visitor to London, Johann von Archenholtz, observed,
“Among the privileges of this nation must be counted the free manufacture of satirical prints that expose the events of the day to ridicule. The Frenchman makes songs; …… the Englishman has chosen engraving as the best way to bring satire to the public.”
Philipon’s judicial triumph was a major victory for the cause of satire. La Poire sparked an increase in the ridicule of royalty, and it became a hugely popular symbol of the king. All of the caricaturists Philipon employed used it in their work—including the mighty French talents Honoré Daumier and Gustave Doré—and it was engraved onto posters and broadsheets.
In modern times, it’s extremely common for cartoonists to draw public figures as an endless variety of inanimate objects. For Spitting Image, we turned Ed Sheeran’s head into a turnip. The merciless caricaturist Gerald Scarfe once drew Margaret Thatcher as a razor-sharp pair of scissors, and Ronald Reagan as a ‘Ray-gun’. But in Philipon’s day, such a move could see you hauled into the dock. Those of us who work in this business should pay tribute to this trailblazing Frenchman’s defiant, ballsy attitude.