Joseph Bouchardy

Joseph Bouchardy (20 March 1810 – 27 May 1870) was an author, playwright, engraver, and member of the Jeune France/Bouzingo and Cénacle movements. The enormous popularity of his plays earned him the nickname "The King of the Boulevard." In 1868 he was given the rank of chevalier from the Legion d'Honneur. He was the brother of Anatole Bouchardy.

Biography

He was born in Paris, son and brother of painters and engravers, originally from Lyon, Joseph Espérance Bouchardy was first and foremost one of the best students of the English engraver Samuel William Reynolds and Alexis-François Girard, masters of the mezzotint. He then turned to the theater and around 1830 was part of the group of bohemians called the "little cenacle" with Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Philothée O'Neddy, Xavier Forneret and Charles Lassailly. In 1836, he wrote two one-act plays in collaboration with the novelist and playwright Eugène Deligny. The following year he composed his first melodrama, Gaspardo the fisherman. It was an immediate success, followed by many more.

Nicknamed “heart of saltpetre” by Petrus Borel and described by Pierre Larousse as “the great impresario of the terrors of the boulevard”, Bouchardy “personified, especially in his early days, the dark and terrible drama of the olden days. [...] Not only does he fully possess all the resources needed to properly entangle the frameworks of an action, to give birth to and grow curiosity, to push interest to the point of exasperation, but he believes in his work." Although he wrote relatively little, his plays brought him "truly fabulous revenue", not only in France, but also in Spain and in all the countries where they were translated and performed.

According to Théophile Gautier, he died unhappily: "He had become a gaunt old man, broken, destroyed by grief, and by the sadness of authors who have experienced the intoxication of success, and whose popularity retires without being able to appreciate the reasons why it went away."

Joseph Bouchardy is the uncle of journalist Georges de Labruyère. He is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery.

External links

• Works by Joseph Bouchardy at Gallica