Honoré Daumier was born in Marseilles into the family of a glazier, who was fond of poetry and even wrote his own verses. In 1814, the family moved to Paris. Daumier started to study art in 1822 under the renowned artist and archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir. The financial situation forced Daumier to earn his living as a delivery boy, while at his spare time he sketched at the Louvre. About 1828, he learned the technique of lithography and began to work for small publishing houses. After the revolution of 1830 in the atmosphere of freedom of speech in France the role of mass media grew and the art of political satire flourished. In 1830, Daumier started to work for Philipon’s “Caricature” and “Le Charivari.”
A caricaturist famous for his scathing social commentary, Daumier earned his reputation primarily as a draughtsman. It was not until a posthumous exhibition held in Paris in 1878 that his paintings gained wide recognition. While Daumier’s political cartoons are often pointed—savagely precise in their references and implications—many of his paintings rely on ambiguity and nuance. This unfinished composition has been variously identified as a dramatic scene of escape and a mundane illustration of a house painter at work. With its bold, graphic style and equivocal subject, this painting is among the most shockingly modern pictures produced in the mid-nineteenth century.
For more biographical notes see part 1, and for earlier works, see parts 1 - 14 also.
This is part 15 of a major 23-part series on the works of Honoré Daumier:
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| 1860-65 The Beer Drinkers oil on panel 26 x 30.7 cm Private Collection |
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| 1860-65 The Connoisseurs oil on panel 25 x 31 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
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| 1860-65 The Former Comedie Française oil on canvas 50 x 69 cm Private Collection |
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| 1860-65 The Mountebank-Musicians oil on panel 25 x 33 cm Private Collection |
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| 1860-65 The Print Collector oil on canvas 35.5 x 25.4 cm Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums), The Burrell Collection, UK |
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| 1860-65 The Print Collector oil on canvas 41 x 33.5 cm Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris |
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| 1860-65 The Reader oil on panel 34.3 x 25.4 cm Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa |
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| 1860-65 The Secret oil on panel 26.7 x 35.7 cm National Museum Wales, Cardiff, UK |
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| 1860-65c The Connoisseur pen and ink, wash, watercolour, lithographic crayon, and gouache over black chalk on wove paper 43.8 x 35.5 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1860-79 Two Drinkers pen and ink with wash over charcoal on paper 32 x 24.5 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1860c A Smiling Man 12 x 94 cm Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK |
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| 1860c Card Players oil on panel 26.9 x 34.3 cm Private Collection |
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| 1860c Head of a Woman oil on canvas 40 x 32 cm Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington |
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| 1860c Hippolyte Lavoignat oil on canvas 46.3 x 38.5 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| 1860c Man on a Rope oil on canvas 110.7 x 72.5 cm National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa |
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| 1860c Reading pen and black ink and grey wash with black fabricated chalk over charcoal on card stock 24.4 x 30.4 cm The Morgan Library and Museum, New York |
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| 1860c Scapin and Géronte oil on panel 33.7 x 25.7 cm Harvard Art Museums, Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA |
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| 1860c The Butcher 27 x 20.9 cm Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur, Switzerland |
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| 1860c The Drinkers 23.7 x 26.6 cm Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA |
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| 1860c The Duo oil on panel 21.6 x 15.6 cm Armand Hammer Daumier and Contemporaries Collection, Los Angeles, CA |
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| 1860c The Horseman oil on panel 38 x 25 cm Private Collection |
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| 1860c The Print Collector 36.4 x 29.2 cm Private Collection |
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| 1860c The Print Collector oil on panel 34.1 x 26 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1860c The Reader 33.8 x 27 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1860c The Uprising oil on canvas 87.6 x 113 cm The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC |
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| 1860c Two Heads oil on cardboard 23 x 29 cm Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, Brazil |
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| 1860s A Painter's Studio 31.1 x 46 cm Private Collection |
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| circa early1860s Collectors at the Salle Drouot pen and ink, brush and wash, with touches of black chalk on laid paper 10.6 x 12.5 cm Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI |
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| 1860s Hunters by the Fire 25 x 35 cm Private Collection |
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| 1860s Le liseur pen and black ink over traces of chalk 14.7 x 12 cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London |
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| 1860s Plea for the Defence wash, pen and ink and black chalk on laid paper 23.4 x 35.5 cm The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC |
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| 1860s The Family watercolour, black chalk, graphites and white highlights on laid paper 17.4 x 19.3 cm The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC |
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| 1860s The First Bath 27.8 x 20 cm British Museum, London |
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| before 1861 The Drinkers oil on wood 36.5 x 27.9 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1862 A Travers les Ateliers lithograph 44.8 x 32 cm ( sheet ) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1862 Nadar Élevant la Photographie à la Hauteur de l'Art lithograph 26.7 x 22.1 cm ( image ) |
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| 1862 On the Railway _ A Pleasant Neighbour lithograph 19.5 x 24.3 cm ( image ) Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT |
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| 1862 Paysagistes au travail lithograph 23.2 x 29.3 cm ( sheet ) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1862 Sunday in the Botanical Garden lithograph 27.6 x 23 cm ( image ) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1862 The ass and the two thieves lithograph on wove paper 22.8 x 20.1 cm Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT |
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| 1862-64 The Departure of the Train 15.5 x 25.5 cm Schaefer Collection, Cleveland, Ohio |
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| 1862-64 The Waiting Room oil on paper 30.8 x 24 cm Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY |
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| 1862-64c The Third-Class Carriage oil on canvas 25.4 x 90.2 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1862-64c The Two Lawyers oil on panel 20.5 x 26.5 xm Stiftung Sammlung E. G. Bührle, Zurich |
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| 1862-65c The Defender black chalk 24.1 x 34 cm Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Netherlands |
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| 1862-65c The Defender gouache and watercolour on paper Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| 1862c A Woman Nursing a Child 16.5 x 14.5 cm Private Collection |
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| 1862c Passers-by oil on canvas 59 x 115 cm Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon |
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| 1862c The Domino Players 17 x 25 cm Private Collection |
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| 1862c Two Lawyers Conversing black chalk, lithographic crayon, watercolour and gouache over graphite 20.9 x 27 cm The Morgan Library and Museum, New York |
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| 1862c Visitors in an Artist's Studio pen and ink, watercolour, gouache and conté crayon 36.3 x 45.5 cm Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Canada |
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| 1863 Portrait of the Sculptor Carrier-Belleuse 42.5 x 28.5 cm Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais |
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| 1863-66c The Painter oil on panel 28.9 x 18.7 cm National Galleries of Scotland, UK |
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| 1863-67 The Painter before His Picture 38 x 29 cm Private Collection |