DAUMIER, Honoré

French caricaturist, painter, and sculptor. In his lifetime he was known chiefly as a political and social satirist, but since his death recognition of his qualities as a painter has grown. In 1830, after learning the still fairly new process of lithographyGLOSSARYThe oldest planographic printing method, invented by Aloys Senefelder in Munich between 1790 and 1798 and later modified numerous times. In this method the drawing is applied to limestone with lithographic ink or chalk. The acid applied afterwards to the plate causes the printing ink to adhere only to the drawing and only the drawing is transferred to the paper in the subsequent printing process., he began to contribute political cartoons to the antigovernment weekly Caricature. He was an ardent Republican and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment in 1832 for his attacks on Louis-Philippe, whom he represented as 'Gargantua swallowing bags of gold extorted from the people'. On the suppression of political satire in 1835 he began to work for Charivari and turned to satire of social life, but at the time of the 1848 revolution he returned to political subjects. He is said to have made more than 4,000 lithographs, wishing each time that the one he had just made could be his last. In the last years of his life he was almost blindGLOSSARYan arch or arcade with no opening, usually as decoration on a wall. and was saved from destitution by Corot.

Daumier's paintings were probably done for the most part fairly late in his career. Although he was accepted four times by the SalonGLOSSARYIn the French language of the 18th and 19th centuries it designated an actual exhibition space, as well as the academic art exhibitions staged in the Salon d'Apollon of the Louvre since 1667. From 1737, the exhibitions took place biennially and, after the French Revolution, annually in the Salon Carré of the Louvre in Paris. Towards the end of the 19th century the official Salon jury was dissolved in order to make way for a committee of state-approved artists, i.e. former Salon members, who created the highly influential Société des Artistes Français., he never exhibited his paintings otherwise and they remained practically unknown up to the time of an exhibition held at Durand-Ruel's galleryGLOSSARYan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen). in 1878, the year before his death. The paintings are in the main a documentation of contemporary life and manners with satirical overtones, although he also did a number featuring Don Quixote as a larger-than-life hero. His technique was remarkably broad and free. As a sculptor he specialized in caricature heads and figures, and these too are in a very spontaneous style. In particular he created the memorable figure of 'Ratapoil' (meaning 'skinned rat'), who embodied the sinister agents of the government of Louis-Philippe. (A similar political type in his graphic artGLOSSARYTerm current with several different meanings in the literature of the visual arts. In the context of the fine arts, it most usually refers to those arts that rely essentially on line or tone rather than colour — i.e. drawing and the various forms of engraving. Some writers, however, exclude drawing from this definition, so that the term 'graphic art' is used to cover the various processes by which prints are created. In another sense, the term — sometimes shortened to 'graphics' — is used to cover the entire field of commercial printing, including text as well as illustrations. was 'Robert Macaire', who personified the unscrupulous profiteer and swindler.)

In the directness of his vision and the lack of sentimentality with which he depicts current social life Daumier belongs to the Realist school of which Courbet was the chief representative. As a caricaturist he stands head and shoulders above all others of the 19th century. He had the gift of expressing the whole character of a man through physiognomyGLOSSARYthe external appearance of a person, in particular the face., and the essence of his satire lay in his power to interpret mental folly in terms of physical absurdity. Although he never made a commercial success of his art, he was appreciated by the discriminating and numbered among his friends and admirers Delacroix, Corot, Forain, and Baudelaire. Degas was among the artists who collected his works.