Jean-Baptiste Côté
| Jean-Baptiste Côté | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 30, 1832 Quebec City, Lower Canada |
| Died | April 9, 1907 (aged 74) Quebec City, Quebec, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
Jean-Baptiste Côté (30 May 1832 – 9 April 1907) was a Canadian architect, wood-carver, glider, wood engraver, caricaturist, publisher, and printer. His reputation rests on his wood engravings, and on his being one of Canada's earliest cartoonists.
Jean-Baptiste Côté was born to Jean-Baptiste Côté and Hélène Grenier in the Saint-Roch parish in the Lower Town of Quebec City. The elder Côté worked as a carpenter in the sipbuilding yards near the Rivière Saint-Charles.
Côté became apprenticed as an architect to François-Xavier Berlinguet around 1850. Côté lacked a strong interest in architecture and turned to wood-carving, going into business for himself decorating ships—shipbuilding at the time employed almost half the population of the city.
The Saint-Roch fire of October 1866 destroyed Côté's workshop, and another fire on 24 May 1870 destroyed his home on Rue de la Couronne.
Côté contributed about 60 wood-engraved cartoons to the satirical newspaper La Scie in 1864–65, and thereafter had political caricatures published in a variety of other such periodicals. Targets included Canadian Confederation, politicians such as George-Étienne Cartier and George Brown, and journalists such as François Évanturel and Hector Berthelot. Côté and Adolphe Guérard left La Scie in 1865 to found the printing company A. Guérard et Compagnie and published La Scie illustrée with the intention of bringing a halt to Confederation. Côté contributed hundreds of woodcuts: mainly caricatures, as well as some portraits and rebuses. In May 1866 La Scie illustrée was replaced by the more serious weekly L’Électeur, then the unillustrated L'Écho du peuple (June 1867 – April 1868), and then the humorous Le Charivari canadien (June–November 1868). Several cartoons in Le Charivari canadien were signed "Nemo", which may have been a pseudonym of Côté's; if they were, they likely would have been his last published caricatures.
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