Political Caricature Portrait with Armorial Device, French Press

This lithograph presents a bust-length caricature of a figure identified by the inscription Ch. de Lam… — likely Charles de Lamartine or a similarly prominent political figure of the French July Monarchy or early Second Republic period. The face is rendered with the exaggerated, almost brutish modeling characteristic of French press caricature: heavy brow and compressed features. Below, a colored heraldic shield with crossed crutches and the motto 'Chacrin n'est pas dessus' amplifies the mockery. Hand-colored lithography — cheaper and faster than copperplate engraving — made such images mass-reproducible in periodicals, bridging the Gillray–Daumier caricature tradition directly toward the sequentially printed comic page.