Although printmakers too were drawn largely from the ranks of the bourgeoisie, this did not prevent them from resisting the materialism, conformity and conservatism of their own social class in every possible way.
Superficiality and predictability
Printmakers mocked the wealthy bourgeoisie for the superficiality and predictability of their lives.
Hermann-Paul’s series of prints La Vie de Madame Quelconque (The Life of Mrs Average) caricatures the mundane behaviour of the average bourgeoise, for whom not even an illicit affair could overcome the emptiness and boredom.
Exploiters and oppressors
More socially engaged artists, like the caricaturistes-illustrateurs, despised the bourgeoisie for its exploitation and oppression of the proletariat. In their view, industrialists, bankers and other capitalists lived off the backs of the poverty-stricken workers.
They depicted these political ideas in graphic work for the mass market, such as illustrated sheet music and magazine illustrations.
Hermann-Paul, And the Intoxication of Adultery (Et les ivresses de l'adultère), 1895
Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, Sheet music Les gavroches by Achille Bloch and Paul Courtois, performed by Jeanne Bloch and Reschal, 1893
Charles Haslewood Shannon, Woman with Cats (La femme aux chats), 1894
Further reading
- Bonnie G. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class. The Bourgeoisie of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century, Princeton 1981
- Monique Eleb, L’invention de l'habitation moderne. Paris 1880-1914 : architectures de la vie privée deel 2, Paris 1995
- Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris. Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life 1830-1930, Baltimore 1999