Charles FURNE
Matériaux et techniques : Estampe
Description : This is a poster to buy Francais peints par eux-mêmes by delivery, a type of sale that requires the reader to pay in advance and receive parts of the book in regular intervals, often decorated with one or two engravings, and one can link the whole story together after having received the entirety of the work. The collection ends up less expensive for the reader, and the editor limits financial risks by having advance payments.
The publicity arguments for Les Français peints par eux-mêmes are of two orders: the quality of the authors and the importance of the illustration, for which the poster gives a perception with this border of sixty characters. The illustrators - some still famous today like Dauier, Gavarni, or Grandville - that participated in the illustration of this collection were just as famous as the authors, their names displayed in more pronounced writing.
The same illustrators were, for the most part, solicited to illustrate the first edition of La Comedie humaine 2 years later - and it’s not surprising that the figures of Français peints par eux-mêmes, sole characters or characters walking in pairs, slightly caricatured, offer an air of kinship with the illustrations of Balzac’s characters to whom they were a sort of ancestor.
