ABSTRACT
Jean-Gaspard Deburau was one of the most famous faces in nineteenth-century France, promoted by an image cultivated widely in journalism, fiction, poetry, theatre and socio-cultural studies. A mixture of fact and fiction, objective and embellished interpretations, Deburau’s image was used to express a certain vision of art and society, to give form and significance to the vision of writers and artists. The purpose of this chapter is to also show the phenomenal extent and power of his image in nineteenth-century France, the era when the visual image developed its modern prevalence and dominance. We consider a chronological sequence of twenty-five iconographical images in the light of Deburau’s repertoire of pantomimes and in the context of contemporary observations on this actor and all he symbolised. Overall, the contemporary picture of Deburau is of the acting genius, the working-class icon, the Bohemian artist, the epitome of whiteness and muteness, not simply the clown, acrobat or ‘saltimbanque’.
