André Gill

André Gill (17 October 1840 – 1 May 1885) was a French caricaturist. Born Louis-Alexandre Gosset de Guînes at Paris, the son of the Comte de Guînes and Sylvie-Adeline Gosset, Gill studied at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. He adopted the pseudonym André Gill in homage to his hero, James Gillray. Gill began illustrating for Le Journal Amusant, but he became known for his work for the weekly four-sheet newspaper La Lune, edited by Francis Polo, in which he drew portraits for a series entitled The Man of the Day. He worked for La Lune from 1865 to 1868. When La Lune was banned, he worked for the periodical L'Éclipse from 1868 to 1876. Gill also drew for famous periodical Le Charivari.

Caricatures

Gill's style, subsequently much imitated, was noted for the enlargement of his subjects' heads, which sat upon undersized bodies. His caricatures, in the form of large hand-colored, lithographic portraits, were considered very accurate and not very cruel. Thus, many of Gill's famous contemporaries wished to be drawn by him. Gill drew portrait caricatures of Sarah Bernhardt, Otto von Bismarck, Émile Zola, Victor Hugo, Nadar, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Adelina Patti, Charles Dickens, and Richard Wagner.

Napoleon III disliked the portrait of him drawn by Gill. In December 1867, La Lune was censored. "La Lune will have to undergo an eclipse," an authority commented to Editor Francis Polo when the ban was instituted, unwittingly dubbing Polo's subsequent publication: L'Éclipse, which made its first appearance on 9 August 1868. Gill would contribute caricatures to this successor of La Lune as well.