I. Chants et chansons

 

I. Romantic Popular Culture
Chants et chansons populaires de la France

An important aspect of Romanticism was the return to folk culture, as exemplified in the Chants et chansons populaires de la France. Therein, the pastoral songs and love songs from the 18th century were now joined by ballads, soldier songs, folk songs, and revolutionary songs. The work, completed in 1843, was published in 84 fascicles: each was made up of an engraved double leaf with the song lyrics, accompanied and framed by illustrations while two further leaves provided the sheet music and notes on the song. The graceful, sometimes figurative, sometimes botanical steel-engraved illustrations frame, entwine, and divide the verses; at other times they fill almost the entire page. These illustrations are not merely ornamental, but functional, according to the publisher Delloye, as a Musée Pittoresque, a picturesque museum, wherein the illustration of the songs also visualises the zeitgeist represented in the material: fashions and costumes, ways of life, and interiors. Following in the footsteps of the engraved works of splendour of the 18th century, the Chants et Chansons populaires de la France, with their high artistic standard, were considered to be the “most important illustrated books of the 19th century” [Beraldi]. The main illustrators were Joseph-Louis Trimolet, Louis-Charles-Auguste Steinheil, and the landscapist Charles-François Daubigny; further, individual models were provided by Ernest Meissonier, Julien Léopold Boilly, Grandville, and others. Owing to their elaborate and exquisite illustrations, as well as the precious bibliophile treatment that has made these specimens unique, these volumes stand as testament to how intensively low- and high-brow culture intersected during French Romanticism.

 
Heribert Tenschert