Georges Goursat ((1863-11-23)23 November 1863[3] – (1934-11-26)26 November 1934[2]), known as Sem, was a French caricaturist famous during the Belle Époque.
Life and works
Youth (1863–1900)
Self portrait (1888) (signed as "SEM")
Goursat's first poster (1891) for the singer Paulus
First caricatures in Le Rire (1897).
Caricature of various individuals playing roulette by Sem, 1920
Georges Goursat was born and raised in an upper-middle-class family from Périgueux.[4] The wealth inherited from his father at the age of 21[5] allowed him to sustain a gilded youth.[6]
He settled in Bordeaux from 1890 to 1898.[10] During this period, he published more albums and his first press caricatures in La Petite Gironde[11] and discovered the work of Leonetto Cappiello.[12] His style matured, becoming both simpler and more precise.[13]
In 1904, Goursat received the Légion d'honneur.[19] In 1909, he exhibited with the painter Auguste Roubille, first in Paris and then in Monte Carlo and London. The exhibit included a diorama composed of hundreds of wooden figurines "of all the merely Paris celebrities".[20]
World War I (1914–1918)
Goursat was not drafted in World War I as he was over 50 years old at the start of the war.[21] He nevertheless involved himself as a war correspondent for Le Journal.[21] Some of his rather "chauvinistic" articles had an "enormous impact".[22] Ten articles were published in 1917 in Un pékin sur le front. Two other articles were incorporated in the 1923 book La Ronde de Nuit.[23] In 1916 and 1918 Goursat published two albums of Croquis de Guerre (War Sketches) with a completely different style than his previous work.[22] He also designed war bond posters.[24]
Années Folles (1918–1934)
After the war, Goursat returned to the kind of caricatures that made him famous. In 1919, he published Le Grand Monde à l'envers (High Society Upside Down).[25] Around 1923, he published three albums under the general title of Le Nouveau Monde (transl. The New World).[26] In 1923, he became an officer of the Légion d'honneur.[27]
In 1929, he was severely impoverished by the economic crisis.[28] After a heart attack in 1933,[29] he died in 1934.[2]
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