Archives & Special Collections

Caricatures

A collection of 3,188 political caricatures (mainly lithographs) covering:

• the Franco-Prussian War
• the Paris Commune of 1871
• the later years of the 1870s

While the majority are of French origin and inspiration, the collection also includes 158 German caricatures.

The collection originally formed part of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana and contains work by a wide range of artists, including:

• Daumier
• ‘Gill’
• ‘Cham’
• ‘Faustin’
• ‘Bertall’
• ‘Zut’
• ‘Pilotell’

The collection was purchased in 1980 from the historian and French scholar, John Patrick Tuer Bury (1908-1987), with the help of grants from the Local Museums Purchase Fund and the National Art Collections Fund. 

How to find material in the Caricatures collection

• To access a list of items in this collection, see Sp Coll HX 133 or locate using the rare books search
• The Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune in caricature (Glasgow, 1981). Exhibition catalogue available in the Special Collections Reading Room
• See also the Siege of Paris virtual exhibition from Northwestern University Library Special Collections, which includes many political caricatures, as well as portraits and images of landscapes/architecture