Bidspirit auction | [José João, atribuído] – ALBUM

[José João, atribuído] – ALBUM OF ORIGINAL DRAWINGS WITH CARICATURES OF POLITICAL FIGURES FROM THE END OF THE MONCHARCY. [Lisbon]. S.n. January, February and March of 1909. 30 drawings. 35,0 cm x 43,0 cm. E. - An album of political caricatures executed in the first three months of 1909, that is, in the last twenty-three months of the Portuguese monarchy. The regicide of February 1, 1908—in which King Carlos I and Crown Prince Luís Filipe were assassinated in Terreiro do Paço—still resonated throughout Lisbon when this album was compiled. João Franco de Castelo Branco (Mayor, 1855–1929), the minister who had governed ”in the Turkish style” since May 1907 and to whose name the issue of advances to the Royal Household and the crisis that led to the regicide became indelibly linked, appears among the figures portrayed. The drawings are captioned manually in pencil, with a highly comical tone. Thirty ink drawings on paper, varying in size from 25 × 25 to 25 × 30 cm, pasted onto the blue cardstock sheets of the album. The author—who signs as ”José João, ” a signature not yet definitively identified—may have been a contributor to Lisbon satirical publications of the time, among which stand out the Humorous Supplement of *O Século*, the *Revista Ilustrada*, and later, *O Raio*. The drawings may have been engraved under a name that appears to be ”Dumas” in newspapers, but the original publication could not be identified. The contemporary binding is of solid blue morocco leather, with gold tooling on the spine and front cover edges, and rolled tooling on the inner sleeves. Blue edges. Endpapers covered in silk moiré. In the previous folder there is a super-libris bearing the Portuguese royal arms — an indication that this album was produced as a gift or work of art for someone within the Royal Family's circle, or that it was once part of a collection of royal provenance. The album is well preserved.