Je ne passe jamais devant une jolie femme Sans la Salüer et luy faire politesse.
(I never pass by a pretty lady without greeting her and showing her a courtesy.)
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A bearded man with a prominent lower-lip walks towards the left, but looks back over his shoulder towards the right. He points in this direction with his raised left hand, as if addressing the woman on the opposite page or else performing a flourish of courtesy. With his right hand, he reaches behind him, pointing towards his naked buttocks. A series of dashes, arranged in a spiral indicate that he is farting.
The man is dressed in a long-sleeved dark-maroon top and pale green breeches decorated with diagonal stripes. His breeches are partly pulled down, exposing his bottom. He wears pale green stockings and slip-on shoes with long, three-pronged flat soles. Two plumes decorate his yellow hat whose brim projects out at the front and splits into two.
Curatorial commentary
- This bare-arsed, farting figure is matched with the individual on the opposite page (675.199). The low culture on display satirises the pretensions of patrician civility and politeness. The woman opposite is hardly pretty, moreover. This is one of several such paired images with scatological overtones in the “Livre de Caricatures”. The closest example at hand of such a pairing is 675.202-675.203.
- This drawing is in Style A, attributed to the principal author of the “Livre de Caricatures”, Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin. Style A displays a childish and naïve aesthetic and sometimes subject matter, and is characterised by crispness of execution, clear outlines and smooth application of colour. It is dominant in the early part of the book, from 675.3 to around 675.160. The opening inscription (675.1a) claims that the book was acquired from booksellers on the Paris quays in 1740 already containing drawings in another hand. The inscription states that ‘my friends put captions [underneath the drawings] and got me to continue this miscellany of follies’ (“mes amis y mirent des légendes et m’engagerent à continuer ce melange de folies”). This may be a tall story, explicable by Charles-Germain’s reluctance to admit authorship of the work. Charles-Germain was a versatile artist, and the possibility that he was responsible for the entire process in these initial drawings cannot be ruled out. In the drawings in the book not in Style A, Charles-Germain first made graphite sketches in much the same way. However it is possible that on the sections of the volume dominated by Style A, Charles-Germain confined himself to working up existing graphite drawings, as well as adding details and also, with his friends’ assistance as he describes, the captions.
Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)
187 x 132
Inscriptions
Je ne passe jamais devant une jolie femme / sans la salüer et luy faire politesse.
Inscription
Inscribed by Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin, below image, in ink
198
Pagination
Top left corner, in ink
Translation of inscription
I never pass by a pretty lady without greeting her and showing her a courtesy.
Language
French
Part of
- Livre de Caricatures tant bonnes que mauvaises. 675.1-389
Collection
- Waddesdon (National Trust)
- Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957
Bibliography
- Colin Jones, Presidential Address. French Crossings. II. Laughing over Boundaries, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 21, December 2011, 1-38; p. 29
- Katie Scott; Saint-Aubin's jokes and their relation to...; Colin Jones, Juliet Carey, Emily Richardson, The Saint-Aubin Livre de caricatures: drawing satire in eighteenth-century Paris, Oxford, SVEC, 2012; 349-403; pp. 349n, 397n
- John Shovlin; War, diplomacy and faction; Colin Jones, Juliet Carey, Emily Richardson, The Saint-Aubin Livre de caricatures: drawing satire in eighteenth-century Paris, Oxford, SVEC, 2012; 95-116; p. 100