La Cour

Carl Ernst Forberg's *La Cour* exemplifies the steel-engraved illustration tradition that preceded modern comic strips. This single figure study depicts a courtier in period dress, holding architectural plans or documents—a narrative moment frozen in static form. Though not a sequential strip, such engravings populated 19th-century newspapers and periodicals, establishing visual conventions later adopted by comic artists: the centered composition, the isolated character, the suggestion of social role and circumstance. These serial illustrations, published across weeks and months, trained readers to anticipate recurring characters and situations—foundational habits that comic strips would systematize through panels, speech balloons, and continuous narrative sequences emerging in the 1890s.