Cham

Monnier’s character, the pompous Monsieur Prudhomme, became so popular that other artists drew their own versions of him. Cham was a prolific illustrator for the French humor magazine Le Charivari. This sketch of Monsieur Prudhomme was likely drawn in preparation for a lithograph. The artist would have further developed his rendering as he worked on the lithographic stone. In the sketch, Prudhomme and his wife discuss the “Schleswig question,” an international dispute over the sovereignty of the Schleswig-Holstein territories (claimed by both the Germans and the Danes) that began in 1848.