Faustin Betbeder was a French illustrator, caricaturist and prototypical comics artist.

Life and career

He was born in

Soissons Soissons () is a commune in the northern French department of Aisne, in the region of Hauts-de-France. Located on the river Aisne, about northeast of Paris, it is one of the most ancient towns of France, and is probably the ancient capital ...

, France in 1847 and lived until sometime around 1914. He became an artist, noted for his unflattering caricatures of personalities from both sides of the Franco-Prussian war and its aftermath. He had difficulty in finding a publisher for the first set of these in 1870 and finally published them himself, selling over 50,000 copies.Caricature website
/ref> After the war he moved to Britain where he produced a less political series of caricatures of well-known British personalities to be published in ''The London Sketch-book'', "An illustrated newspaper and magazine" published from 1873 until 1874 by James Mortimer, editor of ''The

London Figaro ''The London Figaro'' was a London periodical devoted to politics, literature, art, criticism and satire during the Victorian era. It was founded as a daily paper in 1870 with the backing of Napoleon III but after a year re-established itself as a ...

''. The most famous of these is that of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

as an ape holding up a hand mirror for another ape.

References

External links

Lambiek Comiclopedia page.
1847 births 1914 deaths French cartoonists French caricaturists French comics artists {{France-artist-stub