La chasse aux nippes (Hunting for Rags)

This hand-colored lithograph depicts a domestic scene of class ridicule typical of early 20th-century European satirical prints. A portly woman in undergarments and a gaudy hat stands amid discarded clothing while two men—one kneeling, one standing with a cane—examine her wardrobe. The French caption promises that if the woman "is wise, in her cold house we'll let her keep her rags." The print employs grotesque exaggeration of the female figure, a convention inherited from 18th-century caricaturists like Gillray and Rowlandson. The satire targets both working-class poverty and feminine vanity. Such lithographs, mass-produced and hand-tinted, were popular in the Bilderbogen tradition across Northern Europe, blending moral commentary with crude humor—a direct ancestor to the comic strip's visual language of caricature and social observation.