Physiology, Zoology and the Constitution of Social Types

Abstract

What made the sketch industry flourish on a European scale was the transnationality of developments in publishing and of the social type reproducible as printed type. Sketches were able to draw on various aspects of an iconographic tradition of printed types, for example, the ‘city Cries’ which will be dealt with in my next chapter, and it is important to bear the existence of such a tradition in mind for a discussion of the physiological type developed by sketches. The precision of their observation, much though it may have in common with photographic accuracy, derives from an artistic view of ‘type’ which is a cartoon-like abstraction. ‘Draughtsmanship’ therefore plays a particular ‘informative role’ in sketches, a role which is eventually ‘undercut’, according to Judith Wechsler, by the introduction of photogravure in the 1870s.1 The cognitive function of the sketch is that of developing ‘typical’ physiognomies, interpreted in the light of physiology and through an interplay with written portraits. This function lives off the impetus to capture ‘the impress of the present age’ (Douglas Jerrold) in graphic images so that, according to Jules Janin’s introduction to Les Français, posterity will possess a complete visual record of contemporary mores.2 Another driving force is the need to expose the age’s invisible face, ‘its virtues, its follies, its moral contradictions, and its crying wrongs’, to quote Jerrold once more.3KeywordsNineteenth CenturyComparative AnatomyPerson PluralYoung LadySocial BodyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.