Henry-Bonaventure Monnier (7 June 1799 in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
– 3 January 1877) was a French playwright,
caricaturist
A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures.
List of caricaturists
* Abed Abdi (born 1942)
* Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003)
* Alex Gard (1900–1948)
* Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977)
* Alfred Grévin (1827–1892)
* Alf ...
and actor.
Life
After studying at the
Lycée Bonaparte
Lycée Bonaparte is a French international school in Doha, Qatar. It includes levels ''maternelle'' (preschool) through '' lycée'' (senior high school).
The École Française de Doha was established in a rented villa in Slata Al Jadida in the 19 ...
, he frequented the workshops of Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson and
Antoine-Jean Gros. He positioned himself in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
in 1822 and returned to France 5 years later. His meetings with
Alexandre Dumas,
Théophile Gautier
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier ( , ; 30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic.
While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and rema ...
,
Stendhal,
Eugène Sue
Marie-Joseph "Eugène" Sue (; 26 January 18043 August 1857) was a French novelist. He was one of several authors who popularized the genre of the serial novel in France with his very popular and widely imitated ''The Mysteries of Paris'', whic ...
,
Prosper Mérimée
Prosper Mérimée (; 28 September 1803 – 23 September 1870) was a French writer in the movement of Romanticism, and one of the pioneers of the novella, a short novel or long short story. He was also a noted archaeologist and historian, and a ...
,
Eugène Scribe
Augustin Eugène Scribe (; 24 December 179120 February 1861) was a French dramatist and librettist. He is known for writing "well-made plays" ("pièces bien faites"), a mainstay of popular theatre for over 100 years, and as the librettist of ma ...
,
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
,
Louis Boulanger
Louis Candide Boulanger (1806 – 1867) was a French Romantic painter, pastellist, lithographer and a poet, known for his religious and allegorical subjects, portraits, genre scenes.
Life
Boulanger was born in Piedmont where his father, Fran ...
and
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac ( , more commonly , ; born Honoré Balzac;Jean-Louis Dega, La vie prodigieuse de Bernard-François Balssa, père d'Honoré de Balzac : Aux sources historiques de La Comédie humaine, Rodez, Subervie, 1998, 665 p. 20 May 179 ...
opened doors to him.
Between 1827 and 1832, he produced several albums of lithographs, satirising the
mores
Mores (, sometimes ; , plural form of singular , meaning "manner, custom, usage, or habit") are social norms that are widely observed within a particular society or culture. Mores determine what is considered morally acceptable or unacceptable ...
and
physiognomies
Physiognomy (from the Greek , , meaning "nature", and , meaning "judge" or "interpreter") is the practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face. The term can also refer to the general ...
of his contemporaries and of the "grisettes" (or louche young men) in his office. He created the character
Monsieur Prudhomme, of whom
Balzac said was the "illustration of the type of the Parisian middle-class" and who inspired the poem of that title in
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the '' fin de siècle'' in international and ...
's ''
Poèmes saturniens
''Poèmes saturniens'' is the first collection of poetry by Paul Verlaine, first published in 1866.
Verlaine was linked with the Parnassien movement in French poetry. He published his first poem in their journal, ''Revue du Progrès moral, litté ...
''.
On 21 May 1834, Monnier married Caroline Péguchet (known as Caroline Linsel, an actress at the
Théâtre de la Monnaie
The Royal Theatre of La Monnaie (french: Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, italic=no, ; nl, Koninklijke Muntschouwburg, italic=no; both translating as the "Royal Theatre of the Mint") is an opera house in central Brussels, Belgium. The National O ...
) in
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
.
From the 1850s onwards, he essentially devoted himself to writing and theatre.
He was the author of the famous phrase - ''On devrait construire les villes à la campagne, l’air y est tellement plus pur !'' - that is usually attributed to
Alphonse Allais
Alphonse Allais (20 October 1854 – 28 October 1905) was a French writer, journalist and humorist.
Life
Allais was born in Honfleur, Calvados (department), Calvados. He died in Paris.
Work
He is the author of many collections of whimsical writ ...
.
[The aphorism "''Les villes devraient être construites à la campagne'' .. is to be definitively attributed to neither Alphonse Allais, nor to Henri Monnier, to whom it can be attributed as a quotation from his play ''Grandeur et décadence de M. Joseph Prudhomme'' (dating to 1852), which cannot be verified without re-reading the piece. The idea dates back, in reality, to Jean-Louis-Auguste Commerson, who in 1851 published ''Pensées d’un emballeur'', where can be read : " ''Si l’on construisait actuellement des villes, on les bâtirait à la campagne, l’air y serait plus sain''". It is thus necessary to render back to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar, even if a happier formulation would allow Henri Monnier and Alphonse Allais not to be forgotten as the true inventor of the ''idea'' of towns in the country.]
In 1931
Sacha Guitry created a play freely inspired by Monnier's life, entitled ''Monsieur Prudhomme a-t-il vécu ?''.
Principal works
Collections of drawings and caricatures
* ''Scènes populaires dessinées à la plume'', 2 vol. (1830)
* ''Physiologie du bourgeois'' (1841)
* ''Scènes de la ville et de la campagne'' (1841)
* ''Les Bourgeois de Paris, scènes comiques'' (1854)
* ''Mémoires de Monsieur Joseph Prudhomme'', 2 vol. (1857)
* ''Les Petites Gens'' (1857)
* ''Scènes parisiennes'' (1857)
* ''Galerie d’originaux'' (1858)
* ''Les Bas-fonds de la société'' (1862)
Theatre
* ''Les Mendiants'' (1829)
* ''La Famille improvisée'' (1831)
* ''Un enfant du peuple'' (1846)
* ''La Chasse au succès'' (1849)
* ''Les Compatriotes'' (1849)
* ''Grandeur et décadence de M. Joseph Prudhomme'' (1852)
* ''Le Roman chez la portière'' (1855)
* ''Les Métamorphoses de Chamoiseau'' (1856)
* ''Peintres et bourgeois'' (1855)
* ''Comédies bourgeoises'' (1858)
* ''Cendrillon ou la Pantoufle merveilleuse'' (1879)
Bibliography
*
Jules Champfleury, ''Henry Monnier Sa vie Son œuvre'', E Dentu éditeur, Paris 1879
* ROLLET (Cyrille), ''Henry Monnier histoire d'un pitre ? quelques copeaux biographiques'', mémoire de M2 histoire, sous la direction de Christophe Charle, Université Paris 1, 2008.
* ROLLET (Cyrille), ''Figurez-vous Henry Monnier...'', mémoire de M2 histoire de l'art, sous la direction de Ségolène Le Men, Université Paris 10, 2006.
* Jane Roberts Fine Arts, Paris, ''Henry Monnier 1799-1877, A Private Collection'', exhibition catalogue, 2 volumes, November–December 2013
Notes
External links
''Une maison du Marais''(1831).
(1832).
Henry Monnier Fans & Contributors* http://www.janerobertsfinearts.com/publications-jane-roberts-fine-arts.html
{{DEFAULTSORT:Monnier
Writers from Paris
1799 births
1877 deaths
French illustrators
French caricaturists
19th-century French dramatists and playwrights
French male stage actors
19th-century French male actors
Pupils of Antoine-Jean Gros