Ces Petites Dames et Ces Jolis Messieurs par Cham

The cover of this lithographed album by Amédée de Noé — who published under the pseudonym Cham — shows a seated woman and a top-hatted man in close, flirtatious conversation beside a fireplace, a scene captioned as an exchange at a masked ball. The etched-border ornamentation and hand-press typography are typical of Michel Lévy Frères productions. Cham, a prolific contributor to Le Charivari, sits squarely in the Franco-British lineage of Rowlandson, Daumier, and Gavarni: bourgeois manners mocked through precise outline and class-coded costume. His figures carry the period's conventional social typing — elegant dress signaling aspiration or pretension rather than ethnic caricature here. Albums like this one, sold at one franc, were a direct bridge between the single political print and the sequential comic album that would crystallize into the modern bande dessinée.