GAVARNI, French caricaturist, was born at Paris in 1801, and died in 1866. His true name was Chevalier (Sulpice Guillaume), and he is said to have taken the nom de plume under which he is known from the place where he made his first published sketch. His parents were poor, and he started in life as a workman in an engine-building factory. At the same time he attended the free school of drawing. Here his natural talent was developed, and he acquired that training of the hand without which an artist is unable to work up his best inspirations. In his first attempts to turn his abilities to some account he met with many disappointments, but was at last entrusted with the drawing of some illustrations for a journal of fashion. Gavami was then thirty-four years of age. His sharp and witty pencil gave to these generally commonplace and unartistic figures a lifelikeness and an expression which soon won for him a name in fashionable circles Gradually he gave greater attention to this more congenial work, and finally ceased working as an engineer to become the director of the journal Les Gens du Monde. His ambition rising in proportion to his success, Gavami from this time followed the real bent of his inclination, and began a series of lithographed sketches, in which lie pourtrayed the most striking characteristics, foibles, and vices of the various classes of French society. The letterpress explanations attached to his drawings were always short, but - were forcible and highly humorous, if sometimes trivial, and were admirably adapted to the particular subjects. The different stages through which Gavarni’s talent passed, always elevating and refining itself, are well worth being noted. At first he confined himself to the study of Parisian manners, more especially those of the ...