Lithographs by Achille Devoria
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The Historic Textile and Costume Collection houses three lithographs imprinted with dates of 1792, 1794, and 1801 and the barely legible name of “A. Devoria.” Achille Devoria (1800-1857) was a French artist who specialized in portraits of writers and artists, book illustrations, and lithographs that were sold as albums. The subjects of URI’s three lithographs are a fashionable Parisian youth subculture during the late 1790s and early 1800s known as Incroyables (the Incredibles) and Merveilleueses (the Marvelous). Achille Devoria was not born until 1800, so he “borrowed” his subjects from elsewhere, namely an album created by Horace Vernet in 1815 entitled Incroyables et Merveilleueses. Horace Vernet (1789-1863) was only a small boy when the Incroyables and Merveilleueses walked the streets of Paris (1795-1804); thus, he in turn got his images from elsewhere. The originator was Horace Vernet’s father, Carle (1758-1836), who had created a popular set of engravings that caricatured the youthful subcultures wardrobes during the French Revolution and its aftermath, which his son copied years later.