Youth (1863–1900) Georges Goursat was born and raised in an upper-middle-class family from
Périgueux. The wealth inherited from his father at the age of 21 allowed him to sustain a gilded youth. In 1888 he
self-published his first three albums of caricatures in Périgueux, signing some as "SEM", allegedly as a tribute to
Amédée de Noé who signed his caricatures for
Le Monde illustré as "Cham". He settled in
Bordeaux from 1890 to 1898. During this period, he published more albums and his first press caricatures in
La Petite Gironde and discovered the work of
Leonetto Cappiello. During the same period, he made trips to Paris. In 1891, he designed two posters printed in
Jules Chéret's workshop for the singer
Paulus. He published his first caricatures of artists in ''
L'Illustration (Albert Brasseur) and Le Rire'' (Paulus, Polin and
Yvette Guilbert). where he met
Jean Lorrain who convinced him to live in
Paris.
Belle Époque (1900–1914) Goursat arrived in Paris in March 1900 at the time of the
Universal Exposition opening. He chose
horse racing as a way to enter
high society. In October 1900 he published the album
Paris-Trouville with equal success. Goursat published nine other albums before 1913. In 1904, Goursat received the ''
Légion d'honneur''. 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".
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. He nevertheless involved himself as a
war correspondent for
Le Journal. 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. In 1916 and 1918 Goursat published two albums of
Croquis de Guerre () with a completely different style than his previous work.
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
(). Around 1923, he published three albums under the general title of Le Nouveau Monde
(). In 1923, he became an officer of the Légion d'honneur''. In 1929, he was severely impoverished by the
economic crisis. After a heart attack in 1933, he died in 1934. ==Personalities caricatured by Goursat==