Honoré-Victorin Daumier was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870. He earned a living producing caricatures and cartoons in newspapers and periodicals such as La Caricature and Le Charivari, for which he became well known in his lifetime and is still remembered today. He was a republican democrat, who satirized and lampooned the monarchy, aristocracy, clergy, politicians, the judiciary, lawyers, police, detectives, the wealthy, the military, the bourgeoisie, as well as his countrymen and human nature in general.
Paintings by Honoré Daumier
Melodrama (Daumier) (1860)
Melodrama is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Honoré Daumier. It is dated of c. 1860. It is held in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.
Daumier was a great theater lover and is considered the first painter to have depicted this spectacle in painting, even before Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. In this work, he wants to depict, more than the scene taking place in the stage, the reaction of the public who watches it. The viewers appear excited, tense, seemingly unable to distinguish reality from fiction.
The Third-Class Carriage (1868)
The Third-Class Carriage (French: "Le Wagon de troisième classe") is the name of at least three oil paintings entitled made by the French painter Honoré Daumier. In a realistic manner, Daumier depicts the poverty and fortitude of working class travellers in a third class railway carriage. One oil-on canvas version, dated to c. 1862–1864 but left unfinished, is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and a similar but completed painting dated to c. 1863–1865 is in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. A third oil-on-panel version, dated to c. 1856–1858, with a different arrangement of the main three figures, is held by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Daumier had drawn and painted images of rail travel since the 1840s, focussing on the people travelling rather than the conveyances. His series of lithographs, Les Chemins de Fer ("the railway") was published in the French magazine Le Charivari from 1843 to 1858, including prints published in December 1856 with the captions "Voyageurs appréciant de moins en moins les wagons de troisième classe, pendant l'hiver" ("Travellers showing less and less appreciation for travelling in third class in the winter") and "Intérieur d'un wagon de troisième classe pendent l'hiver" ("Interior of a third-class railway carriage in winter").
The Chess Players (Daumier) (1865)
The Chess Players is an oil-on-wood painting by the French artist Honoré Daumier, created in the 1860s. It is part of the collection of the Petit Palais, in Paris.
The exact date of creation of the painting is unknown, but it has been ascribed dates between 1863 and 1867. At the lower left is the signature of the artist, "h Daumier". In the catalog of the artist's works, the painting is listed as DR Number 7168.
The Laundress (Daumier) (1863)
The Laundress (La Blanchisseuse) (also known in English as The Washerwoman) is an oil-on-panel painted by French artist Honoré Daumier in 1863. It is exhibited at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The subject of laundresses, also known as washerwomen, was a popular one in art, especially in France.
Acquired by the Louvre in 1927 and since 1986 exhibited at the Musée d'Orsay, this painting has another two versions, currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, and at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery of Buffalo, New York.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (Daumier) (1868)
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Honoré Daumier, created c. 1868. The work is of small dimensions and has the unfinished appearance of a sketch. It is held in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.
This is one of the works of literary inspiration created by Daumier during the Second Empire. The artist made many paintings and drawings representing Don Quixote, alone or with Sancho Panza, some twenty-five oils, watercolors and a series of charcoal drawings.
Ecce Homo (Daumier) (1851)
Ecce Homo is an unfinished oil-on-canvas painting by the French painter and caricaturist Honoré Daumier, created in 1850. It is in the collection of the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany.
The painting, executed in undertones of various shades of brown, depicts a scene in the Good Friday trial of Jesus when Christ is presented to the mob as a figure of ridicule by Pontius Pilate with the words "Ecce homo", translated in the Bible as "behold the man", but more appropriately as an accusatory "look at this man". The viewer is situated in the crowd in a position where he can observe Christ standing still and resolute, silhouetted against a sacred light, and asked to decide whether to sympathise with Him or with His tormentors.
The Emigrants (Daumier) (1857)
The Emigrants is an oil-on-wood painting by the French realist painter Honoré Daumier. It was created c. 1852–1855 and is of small dimensions: 16.2 cm by 28.7 cm. It is held in the Petit Palais, in Paris. This painting is also known as The Fugitives.
After the workers' revolution of June 1848, the government of Louis Philippe reacted with strong repression, issuing death sentences, thousands of imprisonments and deportations to Algeria. Such events inspired Daumier on this painting, as well as a series of oil paintings, lithographs, and several reliefs titled The Emigrants, The Fugitives, and The Detainees.
The Laundress (1863)
Gallery Label: Best known for his lithographs—social satires and political caricatures that were published in the newspapers "Le Charivari" and "La Caricature" during the reign of Louis-Philippe (1830-48)—Daumier also produced some three hundred paintings. "The Laundress" is the largest and possibly the last of three painted versions of this composition, one of which was exhibited at the Salon of 1861. From his studio on the quai d'Anjou, overlooking the Seine, Daumier observed the laundresses returning from the laundry boats moored on the river, their bodies hunched over from the weight of their loads as they ascended the stone steps of the embankment. Daumier invested his views of the working class with a sense of dignity, which, in the 1870s and 1880s, would be echoed in the novels of Émile Zola and the art of Edgar Degas.
Ratapoil (1851)
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Christ and His Disciples (1850)
Christus zittend tussen zijn discipelen.
The Reading (1857)
De voorlezing. Twee zittende mannen, de rechter leest voor uit een boek.
The Loge (In the Theatre Boxes) (1856)
Louis Leroy, the editor of the popular magazines in which so many of Daumier's lithographs appeared, characterized the artist as a man who "scoffed at the rich and felt a great tenderness for the common people." It is the latter trait that prevails in this theater scene. The publication in 1856 of a lithograph of a similar scene suggests a date for this work. Daumier seldom exhibited his oil paintings and frequently left them unfinished.