Marie Duval

Marie Duvalis a celebration of the art and times of Marie Duval (active 1869–1885) – a unique, pioneering and highly entertaining visual journalist, cartoonist and illustrator whose work appeared in serial magazines and books at a time when the identity of the artist, in Victorian England, was in radical flux. Both a stage actress as well as an artist, Duval was uniquely placed to take advantage of the first appearance of a mass leisure culture by contributing to the weekly magazines that combined current affairs and theatrics with a focus on urban life. Duval would have been excluded from the places in which the penny papers were conceived by male journalists – public house back rooms, for example – but the forging of new professions allowed her to make her way. The book provides an entertaining visual account of the work of Duval as she struggled and succeeded in creating a new urban visual culture. It will look in turn at key aspects of Victorian mass leisure industry, such as tourism, day-tripping, fashion, the theatre, art and the ‘season.’ Placing Duval in the visual context of the emerging profession of visual journalism, this illustrated book offers an enticing glimpse of the exciting, strange and world-changing media environment of London in the last part of the nineteenth century.