Portret van Jean Mounet-Sully before 1896

This is a newspaper clipping, made in France by Etienne Carjat, advertising a play. It's a portrait of Jean Mounet-Sully, an actor famous for his tragic roles. In nineteenth-century France, the theater was a major cultural institution, much like cinema today. Newspapers like this one played a crucial role in shaping public opinion and taste. Notice how the Comédie-Française, the oldest active theatre company in the world, uses its own journal to advertise its repertoire. What’s striking here is how high culture – the plays of Shakespeare, for instance – is promoted alongside advertisements for things like hair pomade. This tells us a lot about the social function of art in this period, its entanglement with commodity culture and popular entertainment. It’s not just about aesthetic experience; it's about selling a lifestyle. To understand this artwork better, we might delve into the archives of the Comédie-Française or study the history of advertising in nineteenth-century Paris. Only then can we grasp the full meaning of this fleeting image.