Laugh Lines: Caricaturing Painting in Nineteenth-Century France is the first major study of Salon caricature, a kind of graphic art criticism in which press artists drew comic versions of contemporary painting and sculpture for publication in widely consumed journals and albums. Salon caricature began with a few tentative lithographs in the 1840s and within a few decades, no Parisian exhibition could open without appearing in warped, incisive, and hilarious miniature in the pages of the illustrated press.This broad survey of Salon caricature examines little-known graphic artists and unpublished amateurs alongside major figures like Édouard Manet, puts anonymous jokesters in dialogue with the essays of Baudelaire, and holds up the material qualities of a 10-centime album to the most ambitious painting of the 19th-century. This archival study unearths colorful caricatures that have not been reproduced until now, drawing back the curtain on a robust culture of comedy around fine art and its reception in 19th-century France.

List of PlatesList of FiguresIntroduction1. Comic Reproduction in July Monarchy Paris2. Dueling and Doubling: The Antagonism of Salon Caricature3. Salon Caricature and The Physiognomy of Paint 4. Salon Caricature in the age of Reproduction. 5. Gravity and Graphic Medium in Cham and Daumier6. Caricature and Comic Spectacle at the Paris Salon 7. Salon Caricature and the Making of ManetConclusionBibliographyIndex