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File:Un bonhomme de lettres en meditation (BM 1987,0516.33).jpg

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Un bonhomme de lettres en meditation   (Wikidata search (Cirrus search) Wikidata query (SPARQL)  Create new Wikidata item based on this file)
Artist

Print made by: Eugène Delacroix

Printed by: Charles Motte
Title
Un bonhomme de lettres en meditation
Description
English: Satire on the Académie Française and the Société des Bonnes Lettres, including the elitist and political nature of academic nominations; in an opulent interior evoking the Ancien Régime, an old man wearing an éteignoir-shaped nightcap, lies slumped in an armchair; he rests one foot carelessly on two books - Voltaire's 'Dictionnaire philosophique' and Rousseau's 'Émile'; in a corner, in front of a crest-laden family tree, a wig on a stand and a sword (accessories of a nobleman and of an Academician) and on the wall, pictures of an auto-da-fé and a portrait of the Duke of Marlborough; other symbols include a candle with snuffer, books in piles, and a letter on the floor addressed to "Monsieur Bonhomme, rue de grammaire, maison des ..."; published in 'Miroir' in 1821
Lithograph
Depicted people Associated with: Académie Française
Date 1821
date QS:P571,+1821-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Medium paper
Dimensions
Height: 177 millimetres
Width: 220 millimetres
institution QS:P195,Q6373
Current location
Prints and Drawings
Accession number
1987,0516.33
Notes

This plate of the 'Bonhomme ...', is from a second stone, copied from Delacroix's original lithograph by an anonymous artist. The publisher had another stone made after the original had broken, following production of only a small number of prints from it. See Delteil.

'Le Miroir' nicknamed the Académie Française and the Société des Bonnes Lettres 'Académie des Ignorants', 'Société des Bonshommes' and 'Confrérie des Bonnes Lettres'. Its members were referred to as 'bonhommes de lettres' or 'bonhommes' and regarded with derision. The picture of the auto-da-fé indicates a parallel between the public book burnings staged under the Restoration and those by the Spanish Inquisition. The candle-snuffer (éteignoir) may have a dual reference here: intellectual lethargy in the context of the figure's night clothing, and membership of the Order of the Candle-extinguishers - embodying intellectual obscuratism, the rejection of truth, reason and progress, and Ultra tendencies. The order was one of three invented by 'Le Nain Jaune' and 'Le Miroir' to mock political opportunism and Ultra reaction; the other two were the Order of the Weathervane and the Order of Crayfish). That the 'bonhomme' is also a 'voltigeur' may be suggested by the portrait of the Duke of Marlborough, an enemy of his country.

For the analysis of the satire, see Nina Maria Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, 'Eugène Delacroix, Prints, Politics and Satire, 1814-1822', New Haven and London, 1991, pp. 75-78.
Source/Photographer https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1987-0516-33
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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current11:53, 13 May 2020Thumbnail for version as of 11:53, 13 May 20201,600 × 1,294 (765 KB)Copyfraud (talk | contribs)British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Coloured lithographs in the British Museum 1821 #2,801/22,275

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