Anyone who has read Le Figaro newspaper at any point over the last half century will be familiar with the work of the cartoonist Jacques Faizant, who has died at the age of 87. His drawings appeared regularly on the paper's front page, often featuring a bonneted Marianne, two spindly-legged old ladies, a gentleman with a Napoleon III goatee and a bemused cat. Faizant was an unashamed right-winger and he used these symbols of the bourgeoisie to air his own feelings of ironic surprise at changes in French society. He was also a reverential -- not to say sycophantic -- supporter of Charles de Gaulle, the first of five Fifth Republic presidents that he caricatured. In one well-known drawing, de Gaulle is seen muttering to himself after a press conference: "What would I do if I didn't have me?" On the general's death in 1970, Faizant drew Marianne -- the female symbol of France -- weeping over the massive trunk of a fallen tree. In the cartoon shown above, Faizant has a rare dig at de Gaulle, implying that the 1961 Evian peace accords to end the war in Algeria are a sell-out. Faizant never had quite the same rapport with subsequent presidents, but his cartoons kept appearing over the decades. By the 1990s it was clear that management at le Figaro wanted to get rid of him. His work reeked of the past, and the paper needed badly to attract younger readers. In 1999 he was relegated to the inside pages, and finally last October he was dropped altogether. Just three months later he died. President Jacques Chirac -- who he first portrayed in the mid 1970's as a sharp-chinned young prime minister -- said Faizant's death "leaves a great void in the hearts of all those who over the years loyally kept their daily rendez-vous with his cartoons."