The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay

175 Pages·2014·39.84 MB·English

by  Thierry Smolderen

The Origins of Comics
The Origins of Comics
This page intentionally left blank
The Origins of Comics
From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay
Thierry Smolderen
Translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen
University Press of MississiPPi
Jackson
Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by a grant
from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.
Cet ouvrage a bénéficié du soutien des Programmes d’aide à la
publication de l’Institut français.
This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication,
received support from the Institut Français.
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association
of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2000 by Les Impressions Nouvelles
This English edition of The Origins of Comics: From William
Hogarth to Winsor McCay is published by arrangement with Les
Impressions Nouvelles.
English translation © 2014 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in Singapore
First printing 2014
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smolderen, Thierry.
[Naissances de la bande dessinée. English]
The origins of comics : from William Hogarth to Winsor McCay /
Thierry Smolderen ; translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-61703-149-6 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-61703-909-6
(ebook) 1. Comic books, strips, etc.—History and criticism. I. Title.
PN6710.S613 2014
741.5’9—dc23
2013024100
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Contents
1
William Hogarth: Readable Images
3
2
Graffiti and Little Doodle Men
25
3
The Arabesque Novels of Rodolphe Töpffer
35
4
“Go, Little Book!”
53
5
The Evolution of the Press
75
6
A. B. Frost and the Photographic Revolution
119
7
From the Label to the Balloon
137
8
Winsor McCay: The Last Baroque
149
Bibliography
162
Index
165
contents
•  vi  •
The Origins of Comics
Figure 1.1  William Hogarth, Characters Caricaturas, 1743. Etching.
This subscription voucher for Hogarth’s third novel in prints (Marriage-a-la-Mode) was part of a joint operation with Henry Fielding’s preface to his own
Joseph Andrews. For both the artist and the novelist, it was a matter of clearly marking the difference between the monstrous burlesque of the caricature
and the comic register of the character study—and simultaneously underlining the convergence between Hogarth’s stories without words and the emerg-
ing form of the novel.
“He who should call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter, would, in my opinion, do him very little honour: for sure it is much easier, much
less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous
attitude, than to express the affections of men on canvas. It has been thought a vast commendation of a painter, to say his figures seem to breathe; but
surely, it is a much greater and nobler applause, that they appear to think” (Fielding 1981).
1
William Hogarth: Readable Images
The First Form of the Novel in Prints
Since the end of the twentieth century, French comics artists have exhibited a 
growing interest in literature and now enjoy speaking about drawing as if it were
a form of writing, an écriture. Without realizing it, they have reactivated a very  
old tradition that can be definitively located in the  original tableaux) helped to establish Hogarth’s 
work of the eighteenth-century English painter reputation across England and Europe. Despite 
and engraver William Hogarth. This conception  its brevity, A Harlot’s Progress (1732) must be re-
of drawing dates to a time when the image, and garded as a genuine novel in pictures. Four years 
in particular the engraved image, lent itself to  later, A Rake’s Progress (1735) appeared, com-
forms of reading and writing whose richness and posed of eight engravings. This was followed by 
sophistication we no longer recognize. In reality,  Marriage-a-la-Mode (1745), a drama in six engrav-
each time a contemporary illustrator relies upon ings, and then Industry and Idleness (1747), which 
solutions transmitted from this distant past (the was made up of twelve engravings. The last series 
clear line, the modeled line, the combination of in the genre, published by Hogarth in 1750, was 
heterogeneous graphic styles, the schematic rep- developed over four engravings: Four Stages of
resentation of instantaneous movement, the use of  Cruelty.
postures or physiognomic expressions, caricature, At the time, only a few polemicists were inter-
speech balloons, etc.), he or she is connected to  ested in the territory being explored by Hogarth 
Hogarth’s lineage, and, through this lineage, to the  and foresaw the importance of its artistic dimen-
deep history of the culture of the printed image.  sion. These readable images situated themselves 
By combining, in an ironic way, an older tradition between the news and the novel—that is, between
of edifying picture narratives with the humorous  journalism and the new literary form that had
literature that emerged in England during his time, begun in England and revolutionized novelistic 
Hogarth is the artist who brought the art of the  writing in Europe (Paulson 1996). By returning to 
print into modernity. Hogarth’s work, we can observe the defining mo-
  The publication, in 1732, of a narrative series  ment when the prehistory of comics intersected
composed of six engravings (based on his own  with that of literature and the modern press.  
rUnninghead
•  3  •