A Portrait of Rodolphe Töpffer
Cartoonist Noah Van Sciver posted a portrait of pioneering Swiss cartoonist Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846) painted in 1821 when Töpffer was 21. It was painted by Firmin Massot, a Swiss portraitist who lived from 1766 to 1849. Töpffer is credited by many as being the first comics artist, although scholars have identified many earlier comics-like artworks: William Hogarth’s series of prints like Marriage A-la-Mode, various broadsheets dating from as early as medieval Europe, Aztec codices, etc. All of these have aspects that we can see as being like comics—a series of images that tell a story—but there are reasonable arguments for Töpffer being the first. So way to go, Switzerland! But I’m not here to argue Töpffer’s primacy.
This is a page from an unfinished story called Histoire de monsieur Fluet et de ses quinze filles from 1837. It was reproduced in Rodolphe Töpffer: The Complete Comic Strips, compiled and translated by David Kunzle, one of the most important scholars of early comic strips.
One reason I like to think about Töpffer is because for decades there has been a belief in the United States that we invented comics. This literally came up a few days ago when a random tweeter asked what were some native American artforms. Among the answers this poster received was one from someone who responded “comics”. I responded to that tweet with a know-it-all “Actually, Europeans were doing comics blah blah blah” post (I confess that this is an irritating tick on my part—if you are ever on the receiving end of such smug erudition on my part, I apologize in advance). But what was weird was his response—he explained he was talking about superheroes like Superman or Batman. He made me realize that some people now think that “comics = superheroes”. And I understand this misapprehension given the amazing dominance of this genre in our popular culture at this moment. (Just typing these words makes me want to write a sentence starting with the word “actually.” MUST! RESIST!)
What I will instead do is a one-paragraph history of comics as I’ve come to understand them. A very young Swiss artist, Rodolphe Töpffer, working in a tradition of European humorous artwork, started making stories reproduced via lithograph that consisted of series of images with dialogue and narrative included with each image. They were outstandingly popular all over Europe (and some of Töpffer’s comics were translated and published in the very young United States). Other artists copied Töpffer’s basic idea and these were published widely in European magazines in the 19th century. Some of the most notable creators of these works were Gustave Doré, Caran d'Ache, and Wilhelm Busch. Comics grew simultaneously with the growth of print as a mass medium. They really took off in the USA with the highly competitive newspaper wars of the late 19th century and early 20th century, which saw an absolute explosion of comics here, including those by George Herriman, E.C. Segar, Winsor McKay, and an avalanche of gifted cartoonists. This was by far the most popular form that comics achieved (before or since)—everyone in America read them. In the 30s, some publishers began to collect comic strips into cheaply printed magazines that were soon called “comic books”. Comic books were so popular that these publishers started hiring artist to create original material for them. This was when the superhero was invented, but it was just one of many popular genres. But superheros eventually became the most popular genre of comic book as comic books themselves became more marginal in terms of readership. In the 1960s, all around the world more-or-less simultaneously, a bunch of young cartoonists decided to put away childish things and create comics that were artistically ambitious personal expression. That brings us up to today.
Back to the portrait that inspired all of this, it was by Firmin Massot who painted in the style of portraiture of his time. You see similar portraits all over Europe in this style—essentially rococo—although a neoclassical strain was already replacing this style by the early 19th century. So compared to a contemporary painter like Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Massot seems hopelessly old-fashioned. When I looked at examples of Massot’s portraits, I couldn’t help but think of English portraitists like Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, etc. Massot stand pretty far down in their shadows, but I nonetheless found his portrait of the 21-year-old Töpffer delightful. And in a way, what pleases me about it that it connects an artform I love with a style of painting that I also love. I recently wrote about some Art Spiegelman art and I have a volume of George Romney paintings open on my coffee table right now. There really is no connection between these two artists except for the accidental posting of Rodolphe Töpffer’s portrait by Noah Van Sciver.
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