More political prints

In the blogs before this I commented on the prudishness of public discourse and the regression of the right to speak, and even though some cartooning, like that of Steve Bell or others makes their target revolting, it rarely calls on a history of revolution to suggest a political solution - like this reaction to the Franco Prussian war of 1870. Captioned with the now rather horrible line of the Marseillaise 'Let an imoure blood slake our fields' - in the post colonial, post Vichy period it is a scandal that it's still there - here it calls for an internationalist solution, the decapitation of ALL the rulers involved:: Bismarck, Wilhelm and Napoléon lll.

These come from hundred of old negative I have of research done in the late 1970s around the Commune of Paris of 1871 and I will start scanning the colour negs soon. The above is a driect quotation from a print of 1792.

Below a nicely witty and direct attack on the French government of Thiers and Favre for its attack on Republican values, easy mix of the political and the sexual in the conventions of academic art forms and satire, so both levels work together.  Remember these prints could end their makers in prison and, outside the great private collections, ironically built as much by aristocrats like the Baron de Vinck as left municipalities in a later period, St Denis, Montreuil, they were systematically destroyed for over two decades after they were made...

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