Honoré Daumier
French, 1808-1879
Le Bourgeois au Salon, 1842 From the series, Caricatures du Jour, 1842
hand-colored lithograph
8 1⁄4 x 7 1/8 in.
SBMA, Gift of Helen and Hilton Goss
1981.38.2
Daumier c.1875
RESEARCH PAPER
During the aftermath of the French Revolution, Honore Daumier, "the Michelangelo of caricature", rose to prominence as the caricaturist of 19th century French politics and society. His determined focus on the foibles of 19th century France make him the one artist who comes closest to summing up this part of French history. Forced to quit school at the age of 12, Honore Daumier developed a life-long sympathy for the poor. Unfortunately, he sympathized so much with them that he died in debt and was buried in a pauper's grave.
Honore Daumier used his skills as a lithographer to ridicule French government and society. In his youth, he even wound up in jail for a caricature of the French King. An extremely productive artist, he made almost 4,000 prints before going blind. He was also a talented painter and sculptor, but these works mainly became known after his death.
Honore Daumier lived in an age of dramatic political, economic, and social upheaval. During his lifetime, there were five major changes in government as his countrymen grappled with the aftermath of the 1789 French Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was also taking place during this time which served as a blow to the old social order, creating an entirely new class of impoverished industrial workers in the process. Against this backdrop, Honoré Daumier used his art as biting social commentary.
Early Years:
Honore Daumier was born in 1808 in Marseille, France. In 1816, his father moved the family to Paris to try his hand at poetry. His father did not achieve much economic success so at the age of 12, Daumier was forced to quit school and work at a bailiff's office. Witnessing the problems of those rifling in and out of jail imparted him with a life-long sympathy for the poor. At the age of 16, Daumier began receiving training in the art of lithography with Alexandre Lenoir and studying at the Academie Suisse.
Middle Years:
Honore Daumier used his print-making skills in several satirical publications of the era. During this period, this was a powerful social platform from which to influence the masses. In 1832, he published an offensive cartoon against the government and received a suspended sentence. Honore Daumier published another anti-governmental cartoon that was just as vicious and was jailed for six months. Afterwards, he only caricaturized the middle-class and particularly liked criticizing lawyers and the justice system.
In 1846, Honoré Daumier's son was born and he married the mother of the child, a 24-year -old seamstress shortly afterwards. Sadly, his son died two years later.
Later Years:
In his old age Daumier increasingly worked on his sculptures and paintings. His works were accepted to exhibit at the Salon four times but received little attention, although modern critics consider them to be ahead of their time. Daumier was particularly interested in the theme of Don Quixote and painted one iconic image of him riding off into the sunset. In 1878, a few months before his death, his friends rounded up a number of his paintings to be shown at Durand-Ruel's gallery. However, these works did not meet with much critical reception until after his death.
Style and Technique
Honoré Daumier worked in a number of styles, depending on the medium. These styles are: caricature, naturalism and sculpting. Honoré Daumier was best known for his caricature works and he used the classic caricature techniques of physical absurdity to lay bare the cruelty, unfairness and pretension of 19th century French society and politics. After having worked as an assistant to a bailiff, he had a particular distaste for lawyers. The medium of lithography allows for quick, sketchy, images, which create a sense of movement - and also a sense of a candid moment. Critics described him as a master at recording the unrehearsed moments of daily life.
Daumier came to painting - and naturalism - fairly late in life and he painted religious as well as historical themes. If it were not for this inclusion of historical material, he would be considered purely a Realist. The naturalist philosophy believes in man's futility against nature and some of Daumier's religious paintings suggest this. He also used everyday subjects, such as The Laundress, to provoke discussion about wider social issues.
He was also interested in exploring literary themes, in particular the ones contained in the popular novel Don Quixote, the fool who thinks he's a hero as he, in the famous scene, battles windmills. Daumier also tried his hand at sculpting, which was not a popular form of art at the time. His sculptures are known for being remarkably life-like.
http://www.artble.com/artists/honore_daumier
POSTSCRIPT
This black and white lithograph by Honore Daumier (1808-1879) is entitled "Le Bourgeois au Salon" from the "Caricature du Jour" series. The image was published on April 17, 1842 in La Caricature, a comic journal of the day where Daumier was on staff and soon began satirizing the government and the bourgeoisie. His artwork hangs in prestigious galleries and private collections throughout the world.
Loosely translated, the caption reads:
Let’s look a bit … What’s this? … , “No. 387. Portrait of Mr. B***, stockbroker … Well … well! … Ah! What an idiot I am … It’s 386 that’s the portrait of Mr. B***. This one here is the portrait of a bull by Mr. Brascassat … I’d say, too … the idea of having himself painted with horns as big as that … After all, those stockbrokers, ain’t nothing that sort can’t get away with.
The joke has many targets, the power and vanity of wealthy stockbrokers obviously among them. The specific association with bulls with a rising stock market can be traced to the beginning of the eighteenth century in England; and the print offers good grounds for believing that it was current in Daumier’s France as well, despite it’s absence from contemporary dictionaries. There’s probably also a jibe at the painter of the “portrait,” since Brascassat seems to have a reputation for making good money by appealing to the popular taste for animal pictures. In a Salon commentary written three years after Daumier’s print, Thore-Bruger slyly inquired as to whether Brascassat’s bulls had been growing in size recently, with the distinct implication that the artist expected his prices to rise with the weight. But the most interesting target of the satire from our perspective is Daumier’s hapless bourgeois, whose first impulse when looking at a picture is to consult the catalogue. Though part of the joke may turn on the city-dweller’s failure to know a bull when he sees one, his extended confusion of an animal painting with a human portrait has its origin in an act of reading. The title, in short, dictates what he sees.
Charles Baudelaire, who much admired Daumier, claimed “the legends that are written at the bottom of his drawings don’t have much use, since the drawings could generally do without them,” but the meaning of this image is thoroughly dependent on the words that accompany it: take away the caption, after all, and this satire on those who read rather than look would be nothing but a picture of a man looking at a picture of a bull.
Transcribed from the book Picture Titles, How and Why Western Paintings Acquired Their Names, by Ruth Bernard Yeazell.