Creator Bio
Alphonse Lévy
1843–1918
Born in Alsace, Alphonse Lévy moved to Paris, where he studied academic painting with the French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme. Beginning in the mid-1860s and continuing through the years of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, he published his political cartoons (under the pseudonym Saïd) in a number of Parisian journals, including Monde comique, Journal amusant, and L’éclipse. Lévy’s interest turned to Jewish subjects in the mid-1870s, and his caricatures of rural Alsatian Jews illustrated Léon Cahun’s La vie juive (Jewish Life, 1886) and Sacher Masoch’s Contes juives (Jewish Tales, 1888). In 1902, he published his own volume, Scènes familiales juives (Jewish Family Scenes).
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
“L’aigle déplumé! . . .” (The Bald Eagle!)
This caricature of Napoleon III (1808–1873), the last monarch of France, was made after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), when Napoleon was being held in captivity in…
Primary Source
Familiar Jewish Scenes
A Suitor Calls with the Matchmaker. Illustration from Scènes familiales juives (Familiar Jewish Scenes), Alphonse Lévy’s book of caricatures of Alsatian rural Jewish life.