Mr Trottman en Irlande (No. 20) — Le Charivari, Paris c. 1845

Lithograph on newsprint — complete verso with contemporary advertisements and political notices. From the “Voyages de M. Trottman” series attributed to Cham (Charles Amédée de Noé)

Overview

The dramatic conclusion to the Trottman en Irlande sequence published in Le Charivari around 1845. This episode transforms Ireland’s agrarian unrest into farce: a French-drawn vision of rebellion, arson, and police incompetence. The sheet was issued just months before famine would sweep Ireland, making its mockery doubly haunting.

French Text & Translation

1. Au milieu de la nuit, la secte des Rebeccaites met le feu à la maison.
   → In the middle of the night, the sect of the Rebecca-ites sets the house on fire.

2. La police, toujours intelligente, arrête le voyageur.
   → The ever-intelligent police arrest the traveller.

3. L’innocent Trottman s’enfuit comme un coupable et s’embarque pour l’Espagne (Voir l’Album).
   → The innocent Trottman flees like a criminal and boards ship for Spain (see the Album).

Historical & Political Significance

This plate collapses several European crises into one absurd narrative. The Rebecca Riots (Wales, 1839–1843) and Ireland’s ongoing Repeal agitation were conflated here to paint the British Isles as a theatre of chaos. For the French audience of Le Charivari, the “Irish Question” became both exotic and reassuring—a distant disorder against which Parisian modernity could measure itself.

• Transnational satire: By parodying British failures to control Ireland, Le Charivari offered France a sly form of moral superiority while projecting its own colonial anxieties about Algeria.

• Media politics: The image circulated in the same weeks as editorials on O’Connell’s rallies, giving it immediacy; Trottman’s farcical arrest mirrored French fears of over-zealous policing after the 1840s press laws.

• Pre-Famine timing: Printed on cheap pulp roughly a year before mass starvation began, it embodies the gulf between metropolitan amusement and impending catastrophe.

Rarity & Condition

• Original Le Charivari daily leaf, c. 1845.

• Condition: very good for age; two discreet archival tissue repairs along the central horizontal fold, light foxing, and small marginal chips. Image strong and untrimmed; full plate line visible. 

• Retains complete verso with typographic advertisements and editorial matter.

• Printer’s credit lower margin: Chez Aubert & Cie, Pl. de la Bourse 29.

Verso Overview

The reverse offers an extraordinary snapshot of Parisian life in the same moment that Ireland was descending into crisis. Among the notices:

• “Louis-Philippe” — advertisement for a newly published biography of the French king.

• “Chemises Levy-Neyman”, “Tahan — Fournisseur du Roi”, and “Grande Fabrique de Billards” — luxury goods for the urban elite.

• Political snippets under Carillon reporting disturbances in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, an echo of working-class unrest only miles from Le Charivari’s presses.

On the recto, peasants with torches; on the verso, gentlemen buying shirts and billiard tables. The contrast is stark—Europe’s hierarchy of comfort printed back-to-back.

Scholarly Context

Part of the same satirical cycle documented in:

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cham: Voyages de M. Trottman, nos. 18 & 19 (Aubert & Cie, Paris).

• Heidelberg University’s digitised Le Charivari 1845 volumes (matching layout and captions).

Continental depictions of Ireland before the Famine are scarce; this print stands as a visual record of how the Irish were caricatured not just in London but across Europe.

Dimensions

Approx. 32 × 24 cm (sheet)

Rarity 

• Pre-Famine Irish subject issued in France.

• Series tied to Cham and Le Charivari’s peak satirical period.

• Complete verso — seldom surviving.

• Two minor professional fold repairs only; otherwise intact.

• Cross-referenced with museum and university holdings.