Milord Pif, chez Bichon Coiffeur

An English traveller is having his hair done à la mode by a French hair artist. The stool on which the corpulent Englishman sits and undergoes the procedure of transformation is placed in the center of the picture. He gazes with admiration at the affectedly gesticulating, fashionably dressed and exceedingly slender barber who is putting the finishing touches to his work. An apprentice toils with the loop of the braid. The traveller's name is Pif, alluding to 'piffle', the English term for 'talking tin'. The etching can be read as a satire on the English in Paris, whose physical plumpness and naivety in fashionable matters amuses the French. At the same time it parades the barber's trade, whose representatives are discredited as fashionable fops and galants. A companion piece to this paper bears the title "Milord Pouf, chez Coupon tailleur\".