Les maris vengés

Rare complete suite of Gavarni’s eighteen lithographs for Les Maris vengés, published in Paris by Aubert in 1837-1838, here expanded to twenty-one sheets by the presence of three plates in two states; the second state is coloured, while the third of these plates also appears in two differently hand-coloured impressions. Eight lithographs are therefore hand-coloured in all.

To complete the series, the collector had to use, for plates nos. 13, 14 and 16, the impressions published in Le Charivari. All bear Aubert’s address at the Galerie Véro-Dodat and are numbered from 1 to 18, except for one plate numbered by hand and the final plate, which is unnumbered.

Modern boards made in imitation of a period binding, in half green cloth, the glazed cloth sides with multiple blind borders, title gilt to spine and upper board. Eight prints are mounted on leaves matching the size of the largest loose plates. Browning to nos. 1 and 4; the remaining impressions are fresh and on stout paper, except for those extracted from Le Charivari. An attractive copy.

Published by the house of Aubert, founded in 1829 in the Galerie Véro-Dodat by Gabriel Aubert, brother-in-law and associate of Charles Philipon, the series belongs to the period in which the firm, through La Caricature and then Le Charivari, became one of the principal centres of graphic satire in Paris. Gavarni quickly established a tone of his own there; less monumental than Daumier, more attentive to gestures, glances and small social cruelties, he made relations between men and women one of his most fertile subjects.

In Les Maris vengés, adultery, suspicion, jealousy and marital revenge unfold across eighteen scenes of manners, culminating in the final plate, Conclusion et Morale, devoted to an accusation of adultery. Gavarni is less interested in scandal itself than in the telling detail; the satire often turns on a phrase, a pose or some slight reversal by which husband, wife or lover suddenly becomes trapped in the role he thought he controlled.

The series appeared at the same time as the first Fourberies de femmes en matière de sentiment, and several years before the Lorettes; it belongs to those years in which Gavarni, through the pages of Le Charivari, established an entire theatre of Parisian private life, with its arrangements, pretences and settling of accounts.

Gathered here with impressions in several states and three plates taken directly from Le Charivari, the series passes from satirical newspaper to collector’s suite without losing the bite of scenes first conceived to appear at the rhythm of the press.