Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is the first of the life-like authors near the bust of George Sand. Nadar used the conventions of caricature to portray him, although he did attenuate them somewhat: the commanding forehead of the “vates,” or inspired, nearly divine poet; the piercing gaze and Romantic hair style. The slightly tipped chest and hands behind his back offer an ironic comment on his status as an exile, for since August, 1852, he had been on the Channel Island of Jersey, which he would leave for Guernsey in 1855.
The author of Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1831), Napoléon le Petit (Napoleon the Small, 1852) and Les Châtiments (Castigations, 1853) was not in personal contact with Nadar until much later, at the time of his campaign in favor of “heavier-than-air” craft and the launch of his balloon, Le Géant, whose outsized ambition was Hugo-esque.