Radical Political Satire: "The Pear's Nightmare"

A. C. (Unidentified), Le Cauchemar de la Poire (The Pear's Nightmare). "Caricatures politiques No. 45." L. de Becquet: Paris. Printed by Aubert.
 

 

As democratic opposition to the "Liberal Monarchy" mounted in the wake of the 1830 Revolution in France, political cartoonists became leaders of the struggle in a constant, high-profile contest with the government over censorship, especially those associated with the seminal satirical journals Caricature and Charivari. The editor of both journals, the cartoonist Charles Philipon, regularly portrayed King Louis-Philippe as a man with the head of a pear, resulting in a public court case in which he earned acquittal by giving the jury a step-by-step demonstration of the process of artistic abstraction. 

   

The portrayal of "The Pear" quickly spread to other cartoonists of the Left. This print deploys it in a delightfully weird example radical propaganda typical of the Neo-Jacobin fringes of the Romanticist movement. It parodies the already-famous gothic painting The Nightmare by Fuseli, but the sleeping woman is replaced by King Pear, while the crouching demon is now Lady Liberty, wearing the phrygian cap of revolution (illegal to wear at that time), her knife drawn to kill him in his sleep as soon as her balance of justice tips.

   

The artist of the print, signed with the initials A.C., remains unidentified. The heading "Caricatures politiques No. 45" tell us that it was issued as part of a series, and raises the possibility that it was published by Philipon's press.