Lithographs Actors

From circa 1841 comes this small collection of six (6) French actors, musicians, and male stage performers. These are full-page lithographic portraits of Parisian performers in the roles that made them famous. Each sheet measures 12 inches x 9.25 inches (Height x Width).  

Compared to the second half of the 19th-century, there is little visual record of the French stage of the early 1840s, These prints are important because the artist drew directly from life. The lithographs are printed on chine appliqué (fine china paper) laid down on thicker wove paper.

Each of these male performers is worthy of further research. For example, Étienne Marin Mélingue (1808-1875) was a French actor and sculptor. Born in Caen, the son of a volunteer of 1792, he early went to Paris and obtained work as a sculptor on the church of the Madeleine, but his passion for the stage soon led him to join a strolling company of comedians. Finally chance gave him an opportunity to show his talents, and at the Porte Saint Martin he became the popular interpreter of romantic drama of the Alexandre Dumas, père type. One of his greatest successes was as Benvenuto Cellini, in which he displayed his ability both as an actor and as a sculptor, really modelling before the eyes of the audience a statue of Hebe. He sent a number of statuettes to the various exhibitions, notably one of Gilbert Louis Duprez as William Tell. Mélingue's wife, Thodorine Thiesset (1813-1886), was the actress selected by Victor Hugo to create the part of Guanhumara in Burgraves at the Comédie-Française, where she remained ten years.

On the other hand, Claude Louis Séraphin Barizain (1783 – 1843) was a French actor, known as Monrose. He was born in Besançon, and was already playing children's parts at the time of the Revolution. He was called to the Comédie-Française in 1815, and was received sociétaire in 1817. A small, active man, with mobile and expressive features and quick, nervous gestures, he was noted as the rascally servant in such plays as Le Barbier de Séville and Les Fourberies de Scapin. His son, Louis Martial Barizain (1809–1883), also called Monrose, was also an actor.

Six  Handsome 19th-century Lithographs of Famous French Actors by the artist Alexandre Lacauchie from the series Galerie des artistes dramatiques (c. 1841-1842):