In her 1876 book English Female Artists, Ellen Creathorne Clayton noted of the illustrator Marie Duval, "Her figures are humorous to grotesqueness, though the ‘drawing' is often incorrect: but this defect has been judiciously utilized in heightening the burlesque." Nearly a century and a half later, in Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite reconsider the work of this important and innovative illustrator. From the introduction through nine chapters and two appendices, they argue that Duval's illustrations can be read as proto-feminist because they challenge the masculinist hegemony of comic and satirical illustration in the late nineteenth century. Their book, along with the Marie Duval Archive, which they set up, is part of a mission of recovery, and as with all such missions, the cultural and historical significance of the subject is front and centre. Grotesque her drawings might be, but as this valuable book demonstrates, their subversion of middle-class morality and pretentiousness makes them presciently modern and still fresh even into the twenty-first century.
In their brief introduction — its brevity echoing the short life of Duval, who died at age 42 in 1890 — Grennan, Sabin, and Waite outline Duval's biography, highlighting the fact that she was an actress as well as an illustrator, one who played trouser or travestie roles in popular plays of the time. This side of her career, along with a scandalous unmarried pregnancy, made her somewhat shocking to the Victorian middle class: "Aside from the scandal of the relationship with Herbert Augustus Such [with whom she had an illegitimate child], she was also known for her cross-dressing roles both in [her partner Charles Henry] Ross's plays and playing the popular melodrama character, highwayman Jack Sheppard. Therefore, she can be described, quite accurately, as a trouser-wearing, French-speaking, home-wrecking mother, and this book shows that in several senses she could also have been described as 'vulgar'" (3). Her supposed vulgarity may have been one reason for her drawing for Judy and Fun rather than the more middle-class Punch.
The chapters that follow the introduction are each written by just one of the three co-authors of the book. Chapter 1, "Finding a Voice at Judy," is by Roger Sabin. Most of Duval's work is at that publication, he says, including her most famous creation, the "working-class ne'er-do-well" Ally Sloper. This figure made Duval the most important contributor to the magazine. Founded in 1867 to rival Punch, Judy ran from 1867 to 1907. (Punch ran from 1841-1992 and 1996-2002.) Sabin discusses the idea of the "serio-comic": the goal of Judy, he notes, was to cover serious subjects, such as politics, in a satirical way, but also more "non-serious" topics, such as "fashion, sport, hobbies." The format included stories, comic strips, cartoons, jokes, and comic verse. Judy specialized in covering the theatre in London, which included the West End as well as more "vulgar" music hall and pantomimes. Articles also appeared about the new "holiday culture" — trips to the seaside, the races, and the countryside. In art, Judy published pieces on the Royal Academy summer exhibitions; in literature, it included reviews of poems and novels.
Duval's illustrations for Judy contrast with the double-page spreads and covers by William Boucher. Boucher's "big cuts" are realistic, detailed political cartoons in the vein of John Tenniel's work for Punch. Duval's cartoons, including the Sloper pictures, often treat the same news item or political subject in a more slapdash and anarchic way. Her cartoons occasionally undermine Boucher's more serious political ones, for example on the Franco-Prussian War of 1870; and Sabin considers her fearless for doing so. Although she also created other characters, such as the "Waddimans" and "Doveturtles" ("two pairs of lower-middle-class newlyweds"), Ally Sloper remained her most recognizable and popular figure. From 1884 to 1923, Duval produced Ally Sloper's Half Holiday (1884-1923), giving the character his own comic strip. Arguably, Sloper was the inspiration for later twentieth-century comic creations such as Andy Capp and the characters in Giles's popular Daily Express cartoons. Duval's work was copiously reproduced for a few years but with her signature removed. Ally Sloper became, says Sabin, the first comic superstar while Duval herself was largely forgotten.
Chapter 2, by Simon Grennan, "Marie Duval and the woman employee," begins with a review of studies of women and work in the nineteenth century and notes the historical association of paid work with masculinity. Grennan argues that Duval's work as a cartoonist undermines the gender binary of employment because if women could tackle the same topics as men, then how could readers assess the suitability of subjects for male or female writers, artists, and readers? He notes that "Duval created a series of male and female pseudonyms under which she drew" (59) and discusses "Duval's self-conscious creation of authorial identities" (60). In Chapter 5, "Marie Duval and the technologies of periodical publishing," Grennan states that no record of what Duval was paid for her illustrations exists. Indeed, a lack of record seems to be a theme of the book: there are no extant no portraits of Duval either. An engraving of the actress Mary Ann Keeley as Jack Sheppard appears in the book because Clayton had said that Duval looked like her. Moreover, as Julian Waite points out in Chapter 3, Duval left no diaries or memoirs. As a subject, she is elusive, and perhaps still challenging the gender binary by hiding from critical view.
In Chapter 3, "Marie Duval's theatre career and its impact on her drawings," Julian Waite looks at Duval's acting career. A Londoner born in Marylebone, who lived in Battersea, Duval knew London well. As a successful actress, she also knew its theatre. Waite points out that she worked in two professions that were different in terms of gender dynamics: in the theatre men had control but women occupied an important and necessary place, whereas journalists and illustrators were mostly men. Examining theatre reviews, such as those in Will-o'-the-Wisp and the Era, Waite discusses the male gaze and the commodification of Duval as an actress. Sadly, the text of Clam, a Romantic Drama, in which she played the trouser role of Piccadilly Peter, is lost. Once again, evidence is missing for part of Duval's life and career, so it's admirable that in this chapter and elsewhere the authors carefully and judiciously marshal what evidence they can without resorting to speculation.
Chapter 4 by Roger Sabin, "The children's book author: Queens & Kings and Other Things," explores Duval's only children's book. This book, engraved by the Dalziel brothers and published by Camden Press in 1874, is slightly reminiscent of Edward Lear's work and features a great nom de plume: "S.A. [Royal Highness] the Princess Hesse Schwartzbourg." The book concerns strange royal households, "where queens dismantle their heads to stop sneezing, and kings go to sea in paper boats and promptly drown" (99), as Sabin says. Towards the end of this chapter, Sabin discusses the half-hearted reception of the book; this reaction may have been due to the grotesqueness of the illustrations, a grotesqueness that provoked a fair amount of vitriolic comment on her pictures in Judy.
Still on the topic of grotesque pictures, in Chapter 6, "The significance of Marie Duval's drawing style," Grennan quotes a mean comment in The Sporting Times of 18 May 1872 that says the signature MD stands for "miserable drawing" and that these are "wretched scratches" and "horrid little woodcuts" in contrast to the "the large cartoon" (137) [Boucher's, I assume] and the gentle and pretty illustrations by Adelaide Claxton. In the same way that Ruskin objected to the witch picture in Kate Greenaway's first edition of Under the Window (1879), so other critics disliked Duval's grotesque figures. Claxton, on the other hand, drew in a style that fitted with her gender and social class expectations, as Grennan argues: "Claxton drew as a middle-class woman was expected to draw, by readers, if such a woman had the misfortune to have to draw professionally, for a cheap serial journal" (140). A letter to the editor of The Theatrical Journal describes her work for Judy as "those grotesque pictures so obviously in imitation of Mr. C.H. Ross's absurd style." (quoted on 138). Grennan says that a number of commentators saw Duval's drawings as "excruciatingly bad," whereas others considered them "technically incompetent" and "unfunny" (138). Yet Ally Sloper was immensely popular, and Duval was a consummate professional, publishing around fourteen hundred drawings in Judy, along with illustrations for other periodicals and almanacs over a period of fifteen years, so they must have struck a chord with readers if not critics.
The last three chapters situate Duval in the theatrical and journalistic culture of her time. Chapter 7 by Julian Waite, "The relationship between performance and drawing: suggestive synaesthesia in Marie Duval's work," looks at acting manuals of the time and speculates that she may have used one or more of them. Chapter 8, "The role of spectacle in Marie Duval's work," also by Waite, examines the effects of pantomime in her drawings, which feature a great deal of physical humour, showing the influence of acrobats and other circus performers, noting Duval's images of bodies falling through things and providing a detailed examination of nineteenth-century popular performance culture. Chapter 9 by Roger Sabin, "A women's cartoonist?" asks whether Duval's cartoons were aimed at women readers and discusses "Duval's visual journalism" and the figure of the flaneuse. As with the book as a whole, these individual chapters contextualize Duval and show how her work was revolutionary. The appendices include a consideration of attribution of Duval's work and a look at terminology and historicization. Both are helpful in clarifying the subject. Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist is a richly illustrated, clearly organized, and thoughtful examination of the life and work of this pioneering English female artist and an important contribution to studies of Victorian cartoons and illustration.
Links to Related Material
- [Offsite] The Marie Duval Archive
- Review of Joanna Devereux's Nineteenth Century Women Artists and Cartoonists
- William Henry Boucher: A Short Biography
Bibliography
[Book under review] Grennan, Simon, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite. Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020; in paperback, 2024.
Clayton, Ellen Creathorne. English Female Artists. Tinsley Brothers, 1876.
Created 28 August 2023
Last modified 30 August 2024