Description

Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)

Honoré Daumier : It is not under the Empire that one would have danced like that!…

Original lithograph

Proof on white paper of the 2nd state on 2 with the letter, on wove paper. Lithograph from the series Tout ce qu’on voudra, plate 34 published in the newspaper Le Charivari on october 17, 1849.

Size of the sheet : H. 348 mm x W. 260 mm.

Condition: period paper with some foxing in the margins.

“Since 1789, the caricature has been a need for our country. It is enormously popular there, and if, until now, it did not become periodic, like the thought or like the joke, it is because the price of the engraving prohibited this speculation. Today, the processes of lithography have made it possible to render almost vulgar this exquisite pleasure that only Parisians could renew every day in the streets, or here and there on the boulevards”, writes Balzac in the prospectus for the launching of the newspaper La Caricature.

Honoré Daumier (Marseille, 1808-Valmondois, 1879), painter, draftsman, caricaturist and sculptor, witness of his time, crossed the 19th century. He lived through most of the political changes of the time. His work is composed of multiple drawings, watercolors, paintings and sculptures. But it is dominated by an immense production by the print (about 4000 original lithographs and 1000 woodcuts).