Cartoon about French Romanticist Politics

Cham, Candidature romantico-politique d'Eugène Sue (Eugène Sue's Romantico-political Candidacy). 1849. Lithograph. Printed by Aubert: Paris.
   

The centrist political cartoonist Cham can often be counted on to provide early glimpses into marginal and radical movements that are graphically unrepresented otherwise, even if he usually does so in service of ridicule (for instance his 1848 image of an anarchist bookshop, also held by the Revenant Archive). By the mid-1840s, even mainstream Romanticism was associated with socialism, and a number of prominent liberal and socialist Romanticists including Lamartine, Hugo, and Esquiros transitioned successfully into electoral politics after the 1848 revolution, though most were deposed and/or exiled (and the rest turned into lackies) in Napoleon III's coup d'etat in 1851.

  

The popular novelist Eugène Sue (see his Mysteries of Paris in this archive under Literature) was one of those who made the transition into politics, elected to the Chamber of Deputies; he was exiled for protesting Napoleon III's coup d'état, dying in Italy. The American Socialist leader and labour organiser Eugene Victor Debs was named after Hugo and Sue. Here he is pictured surrounded by his best-known characters, most drawn from the working or criminal classes.
 

   

This print was part of an unidentified illustrated newspaper, as evidenced by the adverts on the back, including a large one for a book of socialist theory.