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Daumier and Phiz

In Victorian Novelists and Their Illustrators (1970), John Harvey convincingly argues that in completing the research for a commission for the illustrations an English novel three years earlier Phiz would have encountered the work of French lithographer and cartoonist Honoré Daumier. In particular, Harvey notes the similarity between Phiz's handling of Sairey Gamp's distinctive visage and Daumier's use of fine lines to convey subtle facial expressions in the caricatures of financier Robert Macaire and his assistant Bertrand:

In 1840 Browne illustrated [George W. M.] Reynolds' novel Robert Macaire in England [London : Thomas Tegg, 3 vols.]. Macaire, the principal character in a French farce, L'Auberge des Adrets, had been taken over by Daumier and made the protagonist in a long series of caricatures in the 1830s. Reynolds' hero is related only loosely to his French sources, and Browne could have illustrated the novel without turning up Daumier's series; yet his version of the arch-swindler Macaire and his assistant Bertrandis clearly based on Daumier's. In particular, he has taken over the very fine lines of facial expression that characterize Daumier's two rogues.

In the Chuzzlewit plates the influence of Daumier can be detected in a characteristic way of rendering eyelids and eyebrows, but the clearest proof of the connection is to be found in the studies of Sarah Gamp. . . , who closely resembles Daumier's sick-nurse . . . of 1842. In both of Browne's etchings Sarah's head is seen from the same angle as the other nurse's, is drawn in the same style, and has the same features, down to he cleft in the chin. From Daumier, Browne acquired a new fertility and fineness in the witty touching in of faces; many of the Chuzzlewit plates are crowded, but each face in the crowd is an individual study. Earlier plates like 'The Trial ' [March 1837] had been packed with comic individuals, but the Chuzzlewit plates show a more generous sense of the range and substance of individuality. [Harvey, 132-34]

It is quite possible, given his interest in the periodical press, that Dickens himself had seen and been directly influenced by Daumier's caricature, either in a copy of the Paris magazine or in a clipping at Browne's.

Victorian Images of Sairey Gamp, Sick-Room Nurse and Midwife (1843-1910)

Left: Harry Furniss's study of the great comic creation for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), Sairey Gamp. Centre: F. O. C. Darley's frontispiece for volume two, "The creetur's head's so hot," said Mrs. Gamp, alluding to her attendance on the old clerk, Chuffey (1863). Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig. (1867). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Left: A detail of Phiz's introduction of Sairey Gamp to the narrative-pictorial series: Mrs. Gamp has her Eye on the Future (October 1843). Centre: Kyd's miniature portrait of Mrs. Gamp walking through the streets with hat, bag, and umbrella, Sairey Gamp (card no. 24, 1910). Right: From Kyd's book of remarkable Dickens characters, Sairey Gamp in watercolour, as seen in Ch. 19.

Above: Fred Barnard's Mrs. Gamp favours the company with an exhibition of professional skill, old Chuffey being the object of her ministrations in Chapter 46 of the Household Edition (1872).

Bibliography

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.

_____. Martin Chuzzlewit. Edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. The Works of Charles Dickens in Thirty-four Volumes, vol. III. The Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897.

Daumier, Honoré. "Pst!." [Lithographie, 1841. Aus der Folge, Les bohémiens de Paris]. Honoré Daumier. Ed. Herausgegeben von George Piltz. München: Rogner & Hernhard, 1976. P. 23.

Internet Archive. "Daumier, Honoré. Bohemians of Paris, plate 15. The Pedestrain (or The Large Sick Woman." The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund 1922.375. Internet Archive Python library.

Daumier, Honoré. "La Garde-Malade." Le Charivari. Paris. (22 May 1842).

Harvey, John R. Ch. 6, "Dickens and Browne: Martin Chuzzlewit to Bleak House." Victorian Novelists and Their Illustrators. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1970. Pp. 130-59.

Owen, W. J. B. "Mrs. Gamp's Poetic Diction." Dickensian. 67.2 (1971): 91-96.

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Last modified 20 February 2019