Où diable allez-vous donc comme ça!

This pen-and-ink sketch depicts two well-dressed figures in conversation, with a third figure holding a lamp in the center and a fourth in the distance. The dialogue—'Where the devil are you going?' / 'We're going for a walk in the Black Forest!'—plays on contemporary political geography and anxieties about Franco-German relations. The drawing employs the fluid, economical line work characteristic of nineteenth-century French satirical prints, a tradition extending from Gillray and Rowlandson through Daumier. Such caricature and political cartoon served as the visual language of public discourse, establishing conventions of exaggeration, symbolic props, and witty caption that would pass directly into the comic strip and comic book traditions of the twentieth century.