Nimbly dashing off enormous portraits of politicians and celebrities, Collodion caught the public’s fancy, soon inspired a flurry of imitators, and ignited a theatrical craze for rapid-fire caricature.īefore even one year had passed, Collodion’s meteoric career ended in tragedy, but the type of performance he popularized, often called “lightning artist” routines, endured well into the twentieth century as a distinct show-business genre (vid. During each performance, he balanced on a stepladder to scrawl two huge caricatures at breakneck pace, one per side of a twelve-foot-high papered panel. Garbed in knee-high leather boots, a velvet jacket with diamond-slit sleeves, flaring lace cuffs, and a wide-brimmed hat with a feather plume atop a long mane of flowing hair, Collodion exuded the swashbuckling bravado of an Ancien-Régime guardsman, though armed with drawing charcoal rather than a sword. A show bill featuring his self-portrait preserves perhaps the sole visual record of his popular act (fig. Speaking no English and appearing only momentarily amid a four-hour extravaganza, he became a surprise overnight sensation. On the day after Christmas in 1872, a French caricaturist known as Victor Collodion, recently banned in Paris for mocking the president of France, debuted on the London stage. Artwork in the public domain image courtesy of the British Library. British Library, Evanion Collection, London. Walters (lithographer), Covent Garden Theatre: “Collodion, ” 1873.
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