Original lithograph: The White Blackbird
Original lithograph -
By joseph Hemard
, circa 1925, 31.5 x 47.2 in
, condition: A
Today, Le Merle Blanc whistles and mocks... and puts the canaries in their cage.
Eugène Merle, an anarchist journalist, founded Le Merle Blanc in 1919, a weekly that imitated the satirical formula of the Canard Enchaîné: the pairing of text and drawing, impertinence and irony, left-wing commitment — but on an entirely different scale, both in the means used and in the results achieved. The print run of the first issue, published on 10 May 1919, was 35,000 copies, roughly matching that of the Canard Enchaîné. It rose to 120,000 copies in August 1920, 147,000 in October 1920, 500,000 in April 1921 and 812,000 in April 1922. From 1925 to 1927, circulation fell rapidly and the newspaper closed in 1927.
Why “Merle Blanc” (White Blackbird)? In everyday French, a “merle blanc” refers to something exceptional or extremely rare.
