Caricatures, Hugo à la Une at the Maison Victor Hugo: photos

The Maison de Victor Hugo is dedicating an exhibition to Victor Hugo's Caricatures, from September 13 to January 6, 2019. At the time, the press caricatured Victor Hugo according to his stances and current events, in 1848. More than an exhibition devoted to Victor Hugo, the Maison de Victor Hugo offers us here a historical analysis of caricature in the 19th century.

With its Caricatures exhibition, the Maison Victor Hugo offers us a fine presentation of the French press in the 19th century, through 180 caricatures dedicated to Victor Hugo. While one might think that focusing the exhibition on a single man would be too narrow an analysis, Victor Hugo is an ideal case in point.

This man of letters was themost caricatured man of his time, for his topicality, his political stance and his commitment.... from 1830 to 1885, his daily life was featured by the greatest caricaturists of the era: Daumier, G. Doré, Cham, Gill, Lepetit, Nadar, Roubaud....

Through 180 cartoons selected from the museum's collections, the exhibition shows how Victor Hugo was adulated for his literary work and plays, then criticized for his political commitment to Louis Napoléon Bonaparte(Napoléon III), elected President of the Republic in 1848.

He fell out of favor with journalists and cartoonists, who portrayed him as cold and evil in 1848 and 1849, but came back stronger than ever when he was discredited by the authorities for his opposition to Napoleon III's coup d'état, and determined to keep power after his term of office was over!

His departure into exile on December 11, 1851, and the violent repression that accompanied the end of the Second Republic and the start of the Second Empire forbade any mention of Victor Hugo.
This was due to the censors - nicknamed "Anastasie" at the time. Yes, repressive laws (September 1835, June 1848, December 1851, February 1852) muzzled the press on political issues, and the situation improved from 1868 onwards, with freedom of the press finally guaranteed by the law of July 29, 1881. This didn't stop several cartoonists from talking about Victor Hugo in the press, taking care to highlight his literary news abroad, a way of circumventing censorship and paying tribute to this man of letters, right up until his death!