The Musée de l’Image houses one of the biggest collections of French and foreign popular images (over 100,000) produced from the 17th century onwards. It preserves images printed in Épinal as well as in all the other image-making centres in France (Orléans, Chartres, Paris etc) and abroad (Germany, India or Japan etc).
The Museum actively buys contemporary images, such as paper models or educational images to keep traditional methods alive.
What is popular imagery?
Popular imagery was initially produced by mechanical printing techniques, beginning with woodcuts and subsequently copper engraving in the 17th century, lithography in the 19th, then offset printing etc. These successive or concomitant techniques allow subjects to be reproduced ad infin and distributed to the largest possible number of readers at the minimum cost.
Although until the beginning of the 19th century, imagery was used as a propaganda tool for the Catholic church, it ultimately entered the secular world. From 1830 onwards, it was instrumental in constructing the Napoleonic myth, reporting the news and guiding opinion for successive governments.
In around 1840, it became a tool for educating children. For the first time, it popularised the subjects of traditional literary works in the form of vignettes: this was the formula on which so-called Épinal-style image-making built its fortune and reputation. Departing from the confines of traditional literature, thousands of morality stories and tales of good and evil were specifically created to edify young girls and boys. In a further attempt to educate young minds, image-makers also published games, paper theatres and, from 1860 onwards, images to cut out and build, including architectural subjects, paper dolls, pictures animated with pull tabs, etc.
By the end of the 19th century, children’s education and leisure became the main focus of the image-making trade. However, competition from the increasing number of specialised children’s books publishers made survival difficult for images that had “popular” and “childish” connotations in the minds of the public. Image-makers - and Imagerie d'Épinal in particular – harnessed the aesthetics of their creations to advertise all kinds of consumer products. The bright, primary colours and the children’s story layout in vignettes, proved attractive to the passers-by into whose hands these advertising leaflets were thrust.
Whether used for preservation, decoration, découpage, education, play or information, popular images always convey a meaning: they have a function.
Épinal images
Popular images are a European – basically Christian - phenomenon which during the 19th century then spread to regions colonised and evangelised by Europeans.
Image-makers can be found in almost all European countries. In France, the image-makers in Orléans, Chartres, Toulouse and Paris were the most highly renowned until the beginning of the 19th century. Épinal was at the time a small manufacturing centre for playing cards, where a few card-makers also engraved pictures of the saints.
The French Revolution transformed the landscape for these crafts. Kings and queens were banned from playing cards, representations of saints and religious themes were no longer topical. Many image-makers and card-makers shut up shop and switched to other businesses. In Épinal, Jean-Charles Pellerin, who descended from a long line of card-makers, resumed his business under the Empire, a system of government which he supported. He republished some old religious woodcuts that he had been storing in his attic and, he made a name for himself as one of the few image-makers outside Paris to produce a series of portraits of members of the Bonaparte family and his generals, and to reproduce all the prestigious corps of the imperial army as paper soldiers, thus affirming his support for the Emperor Napoleon.
In return, he was given one of the highly coveted printing licences, which Napoleon handed out very sparingly in order to control the work done by printers. Unlicensed printers who wanted to print text on images were forced to subcontract, thus increasing the cost of their paper images. They disappeared very quickly and the great image-making centres like Chartres, Orléans and Toulouse had faded away by 1830, while Pellerin innovated, mechanised and expanded. The images were popular because of their bright colours; the surrealist "orange pigment" was attractive and other image-makers in Montbéliard and Belfort copied it.
After some minor trouble sat the time of the Restoration in 1815, Pellerin reiterated his commitment to the Emperor by publishing a series of large prints glorifying Napoleon, which sealed Imagerie d'Épinal’s success. It continued to shine during the 19th century, despite very tough competition from Metz, Wissembourg, Pont-à-Mousson and other towns in Eastern France. Pellerin’s designer Charles Pinot even set up a rival image-making company right in Épinal. This trade war promoted competition and sparked constant innovation, spurring the image-makers to try to outdo each other. The years between 1850 and 1870 were the Golden Age of popular image-making and Pellerin's business flourished.
The generic term image d’Épinal went on to be used for all popular imagery. Metz and Wissembourg were annexed by the German Empire in 1870 and lost their access to the French market. The Pinot image-making company collapsed after the death of its founder in 1874. Pellerin took it over in 1888 and wrote "Once again we are Épinal".
The Musée de l’Image preserves many prints produced by the biggest image-makers in France dating from the 17th century. But it has a particularly rich collection from the years in the 19th century which saw the establishment of industrial image-making plants in eastern France (Épinal, Metz, Jarville, Pont-à-Mousson etc). Foreign image-makers also gained a foothold - including those from Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Austria, as well as India, Japan, China and others.
Some printing equipment (woodcuts and lithography stones) originated in Imagerie d’Épinal.
The Museum’s acquisitions
The Musée de l’Image’s acquisition policy currently has a dual purpose: to consolidate existing stocks by filling in the gaps (foreign images, cut-out images, Épinal’s current output etc) and to ensure continuity between the popular imagery of today and the images of the past. Among the many different functions of popular images in the 19th century, cut and mount images are a rarity that has persisted to this day in the characteristic form of loose sheets. For this reason, the Musée de l’Image is involved in a long term campaign to acquire images of French and foreign architecture from publishers such as Instant Durable, Schreiber-Bogen, Piroux and others.
While its collections may consist primarily of popular prints, the Museum has not turned its back on modern day images, addressing the eternal relationship between scholarly and popular images. Image production has always involved constant dialogue, an interchange of references, which either faithfully reflect the model or sit in opposition. Contemporary artists, including painters, engravers, illustrators, photographers, writers or stage directors, perpetuate this relationship. For its regular temporary exhibitions, the Musée de l’Image purchases output from contemporary artists whose work is consistent with our approach to interpreting and referencing images. These include paintings by Dorothée Selz and the series of war images, photographs by Clark and Pougnaud and the Degrés des Ages lifespan theme.
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You can see a selection of images held by the Musée de l'Image in the article "Overview of the collections".
