RODOLPHE TÖPFFER
Swiss authos and illustrator (1799-1946)
Biography:
As a Swiss author and illustrator in French, Töpffer has written novel, short stories and tales illustrated by himself. His style is quite similar to Rowlandson's and Hogarth's.
Töpffer, author of illustrated works:
Printed stories:
Le Docteur Festus, 1829, Cherbuliez, Genève and Paris, Histoire de M. Jabot, Genève, 1833 M. Crépin, Genève, 1837 Les amours de M. Vieux Bois, Genève, 1837 Monsieur Pencil, M. Cryptogame, Genève, 1845 Histoire d'Albert, Genève, 1845
Travel stories:
Voyage à Milan Voyage à Gênes Voyage à Venise Voyage autour du Mont-Blanc Voyages en zig-zag Nouvelles Génevoises
Critical studies on Rodolphe Töpffer
Printed literature:
"You can write stories with chapters, lines, words: that's the actual literature. You can write stories with a succession of graphic scenes: that's printed literature. You can also do neither one nor the other, and sometimes that's the best!"
Rodolphe Töpffer has invented the printed literature, predecessor of comic strips: a kind of literature meant to see rather than read, capable to have effect on children, antidote against immoral literature...
"Not having any previously acquired knowlegde on graphic immitation and thus, having to other aim than offer phantasy and whim for our own amusement, I wrote M. Jabot, M. Crépin and M. Untel (...) Critics and learnt people don't pay attention the printed literature, even if many generations have been thrilled by it. It acts upon children and common people, which are those more easily corrupted but at the same time more desirable to moralise" (Töpffer).
Adam Töpffer, his father, put him in touch with Hogarth printings. But it is Töpffer who creates the genre of the story in images. He is the only author of his books: he writes the text, prepeares the drawings, lays all down in litographic paper, finishes the layout.
Töepffer presents his innovation in l'"Annonce de l'histoire de M. Jabot" (1837) in the following way:
"Ce petit livre se compose d'une série de dessins autographiés au trait. Chacun de ces dessins est accompagné d'une ou deux lignes de texte. Les dessins, sans ce texte, n'auraient qu'une signification obscure; le texte, sans les dessins, ne signifierait rien. Le tout forme une sorte de roman, un livre qui, parlant directement aux yeux, s'exprime par la représentation, non par le récit. Ici, comme on le conçoit aisément, les traits d'observation, le comique, l'esprit, résident dans le croquis lui même plus que dans l'idée que le croquis développe."
Your mind should be in the sketch more than in the idea. Abandon the illustration and the story in images: Töpffer invents the comic strip. Balloons were introduced later in 1897 by Dirks.
Töpffer is absolutelly aware of his originality. In 1840 he writes the following words, regretting that Daumier or Gavarni don't write stories in images:
"They do series, that is different aspects of the same idea; independent things, not linked by the same thought."
Then he will test out two versions of Docteur Fastus, one in images and the other "translating the text". And he said of both versions: "What they have different changes a lot what they have in common".
The printed literature was very successful. Goethe congratulated Töpffer and it had a great influnece on Cham, Gustave Doré and Nadar. His most direct disciple was Cham, who printed on wood "L'histoire de Monsieur Cryptogame", but this adaptation was rather considered as betrayal.
It was Wilhelm Busch, draughtsman, who really ensured continuity between Töpffer's work and comic strip.
Writer and Technologist:
Admirer of Laurence Sterne and Xavier de Maistre, Töpffer was a successful writer, very eclectic and imaginative.
He published "Voyages en Zig-zag" and "Nouveaux Voyages en Zig-zag", illustrated by himself, and "Réflexions et menus propos d'un peintre genevois".
As François Caradec said, Töpffer used a "refugee style, natural of exiliated protestants in the Neederlands and Switzerland, who tried to avoid being influenced by other languages when writing in French. But this language reflectcs mainly the image".
Töpffer is a digression writer and his texts show modernity.
Another aspect of his modernity is his passion for technology.
He wrote an essay on the superiority of printed drawings.
He comments on his "Treatise on Washing Drawing in Indian ink": I've written a treatise on Washing Drawing in Indian ink and I've finished writing it as soon as I have realised that it has nothing to do with Wash drawing or Indian ink.
Founder of comic strip, Töpffer also helped in searching a mixed technique and a certain type of writing known today as hypermedia.