A Communard in Dickensian London: Auguste Lancon

In 1986 I edited, with my friend Victor E. Neuburg, a collection of Charles Dickens's social criticism, under the title A December Vision. One of the pleasures of that project was researching visual images to match Dickens's texts on London's workhouses, prisons, and ragged schools. Illustrators such as George Cruickshank, Phiz, Watts Phillips, W.G. Mason, Kenny Meadows, William M'Connell, A. Henning, and various Punch cartoonists, enlivened the pages, along with work by two French artists, Gustave Dor� and Gavarni. But I don't recall ever coming across the searing etchings of Auguste Lan�on, created around 1880 to accompany the text La Rue � Londres by his friend Jules Vall�s, published in 1884. It's a shame as many of them perfectly illustrate the scenes of poverty and desperation that so strongly roused Dickens's sense of injustice and inequality.

Auguste Lan�on, Un abreuvoir dans Tottenham-Court-Road
Etching, 1884

Auguste Lan�on, Une ruelle dans Spitalfields
Etching, 1884

Auguste Lan�on, Pauvresses accroupies contre le mur du "Workhouse" de Saint-Giles
Etching, dated 1881 in the plate

Both Vall�s and Lan�on were Communards, exiled in London after the fall of the ill-fated Paris Commune in 1871. Vall�s was actually condemned to death, but escaped to England. Lan�on spent six months imprisoned in the Satory camp - presumably in a similar cell to that of Philippe Cattelain - before joining Vall�s in exile in London. Men such as Jules Vall�s and Auguste Lan�on were primed by their own experiences and deeply-held political beliefs to side with those in the underbelly of Victorian society, and rage against their plight. Both the text and etchings are very powerful evocations of the pitiful condition of the London poor, at the height of Britain's power and wealth, and it is a shame that La Rue � Londres seems so little known, presumably because it was never translated into English.

Auguste Lan�on, Le soir dans un "Lodging-House" de Drury Lane
Etching, dated 1880 in the plate


Auguste Lan�on, Un m�nage d'�migrants Irlandais dans un "Lodging-House" de Drury Lane
Etching, 1884

Auguste Lan�on, La salle basse d'un "Lodging-House" de femmes dans Drury Lane
Etching, 1884

Auguste Lan�on is an artist I had previously come across largely as an accomplished etcher of animal scenes, so these London etchings come as something of a revelation. They are beautifully observed, often quite dark, and full of telling details. As records of the life of the London poor at this period, these remarkable etchings stand comparison with the wood engravings of Gustave Dor� for Blanchard Jerrold's London.

Auguste Lan�on, La servante "The General Servant"
Etching, 1884


Auguste Lan�on, La cuisine
Etching, dated 1880 in the plate


Auguste Lan�on, Types de petites ouvri�res dans leur int�rieur
Etching, 1884

Auguste Andr� Lan�on was born in 1836 in Saint-Claude in the Jura, the son of a carpenter. Lan�on was first apprenticed to a lithographer in Saint-Claude, then studied at the �cole des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, and finally went to Paris to study under Picot. He first exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1861, under the name Andr� Lan�on, which he continued to use until 1870.


Auguste Lan�on, Un campement de "Gypsies"
Etching, 1884

When Lan�on began exhibiting again in 1872, after the interruption of the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, and imprisonment, it was as Auguste Lan�on, and this switch of first names has led to confusion, with some writers assuming that Andr� and Auguste were two different artists. La Rue � Londres credits him as A. Lan�on, though most of the etchings are signed in the plate Aug. Lan�on.


Auguste Lan�on, Chez Painter le marchand de tortues - Les r�servoirs
Etching, 1884

La Rue � Londres was published by Georges Charpentier in an edition of 600 copies: 50 on Whatman with the etchings in two states, 50 on Japan, also with the etchings in two states, and 500 on wove paper, with the etchings in their final state. In all cases the etchings themselves were printed by either A. Salmon or F. Li�nard on Hollande wove paper. The front cover claims 23 etchings, the title page 22, the latter being the correct total.

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