Panorama of the Franco Prussian War by Percy Cruikshank 1870-1871

Cruikshank, Percy. Panorama of the Franco-Prussian War. 
 
London: F. Platts, 185 Fleet Street; Mann Nephews, 3 Cornhill, [1870–71]. 
 
Concertina panorama, hand-coloured lithographic caricatures, 13cm by 15 cm high, folding to c. 3 metres. Original pictorial paper laid onto green cloth boards, printed black, with colouring by the illustrator. The hand colouring throughout the panorama remains bright, the paper with light spotting only. Three folds have been repaired on the reverse with archival tissue to reattach panels, making the panorama now complete and workable. The original green pictorial boards are clean, with only light wear to the edges and a small archival reinforcement at the inner hinge. A very good, display-worthy copy of a work seldom seen complete, like this.
 
A rare satirical panorama by Percy Cruikshank, chronicling the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War through a continuous sequence of caricatures. The scenes run from the Ems Telegram and the outbreak of war to the fall of Paris, with every major figure rendered in Cruikshank’s grotesque hand: Napoleon III, Bismarck, Moltke, and the French generals all appear, swaggering or blundering through the sequence, with gallows humour throughout. The Prussian eagle and French cock exchange blows, the siege of Metz descends into starvation, and the final scenes see France “laid out” and Prussia “laid up”. Each vignette is accompanied by Cruikshank’s comic captions.
 
The front board is a visual manifesto for the panorama. It depicts the war as a farce in a crowded theatre of nations, with King Wilhelm I of Prussia, Napoleon III and the American president in grotesque confrontation, watched by a gallery of international spectators. The credit line reads “Painted by P.C. from the sketches in Messrs Smith, Brown, Jones & Robinson” – a publisher’s joke. There were, of course, no such artists: Platts used the fictitious firm “Smith, Brown, Jones & Robinson” as a parody of the illustrated press, while the initials “P.C.” identify Percy Cruikshank himself, nephew of George Cruikshank, as the illustrator of all the work in the panorama.
 
Copies are rare in commerce with only a small handful in institutions.