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HonorÈ Daumier, artist
French, 1808 - 1879
Caricature Bust of a Man in High Collar with a Pointed Head, 19th century
cast bronze
8 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 4 3/4 (21.6 x 19.1 x 12.1 cm)
Mildred Anna Williams Collection 1974.10
Artist Credit: all
Artist Biography: Prolific caricaturist, painter, lithographer and sculptor. Especially renowned for satirical cartoons and drawings of 19th-century French politics and society. His paintings, not widely known during his lifetime, helped introduce the techniques of Impressionism into modern art. ~~The child of artists, received a typical lower middleclass education, but wanted to draw - his studies did not interest him. Thus his family placed him with an old and fairly well-known artist, Alexandre Lenoir. Lenoir, student and friend of Jacques-Louis David, was more aesthetician than painter. He had a pronounced taste for Rubens, one of whose works he owned himself. A collector of sculpture, he had preserved the most beautiful medieval and contemporary sculptures from the Revolutionaries, which interested Daumier. ~~At 13 his father suffered a mental breakdown, forcing Daumier to seek payed employment. He first served as a messenger boy for a bailiff and, through experience, acquired familiarity with the world of lawcourts. He also worked as a bookseller's clerk at the Palais-Royal, one of the busiest spots in Paris. There Daumier saw, from his employer's window, all characters of the "ComÈdie humaine," whom he would laterdiscuss with his friend Balzac: not only men and women of fashion, intellectuals, and artists, but also "captains of industry," or swindlers, as they were more often called--all of whom lent themselves to caricature. ~~In about 1825-28, Daumier decided to embark on the artistic career of which he had always dreamed. He was a young man of about 18 or 20, from a family of painters, had had an opportunity to admire Rubens, had learned to analyze sculpture, and finally had spent time observing the appearance and behavior of different classes of French society.~~Unable to earn a living from painting or sculpture, he accepted commissions for lithographs - portraits and cartoons of "morals and manners" ~("caricatures de moeurs").~ ~His working life can be divided into two parts: from 1830 to 1847 he worked as a lithographer, cartoonist, and sculptor; and, beginning in 1848 until 1871, he was an Impressionist painter whose art was reflected in the~lithographs he continued to produce.~~His satirical work began in 1830. He enjoyed the company of grandiloquent men and mainly associated with political liberals. Charles Philipon, a leftist journalist who had founded the opposition journal "La Caricature," invited him to contribute. ~~King Louis-Philippe generally tolerated the press's jokes at his expense, but, when unduly provoked, instead of bringing suit against a paper, he would seize it, a procedure that spelled ruin for its staff and financial backers. Only once during his reign did he deal severely with an offender - with Daumier in 1832 - and then only after two violent attacks. Given six months in prison, Daumier spent two in the state prison and four in a mental hospital. The king intended to show that one had to be insane to oppose and caricature him. ~~After release in February of 1833, Daumier was never again indicted, although he continued to attack the regime through his cartoons.~ ~Daumier's characters were universal: businessmen, lawyers, doctors, professors, and petits bourgeois. The treatment of his lithographs was sculptural, leading Balzac to say that he had a bit of Michelangelo under his skin. ~~Daumier's closest friends were sculptors - all of them romantic, impoverished, and ardent leftists. Although intimate with these few friends, Daumier was not a member of any of the many artistic or literary circles of the time. He was not inclined to participate in the salons or the cafe scene.~~~Reference: Delteil, Loys. HonorÈ Daumier . 10 vols. (Le Peintre-Graveur IllustrÈ Vols. 20-29). Paris: Delteil, 1925-1926~Prevost, Louis. HonorÈ Daumier /A Thematic Guide to the Oeuvre. ed. w. intro. by Elizabeth C. Childs. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989.~Lemann, Bernard. HonorÈ Daumier 240 Lithographs. (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1946)~Passeron, Roger. Daumier. tr. by Helga Harrison.(Secaucus, NJ: Poplar Books, 1981)~Bouvy, EugËne. DAUMIER, l'oeuvre gravÈ de maitre (Paris (?), 1933)~
Related Keywords
Head Pointed with Collar High in Man a of Caricature Williams Anna Mildred Europe bust France Sculpture bronze cast Honoré Daumier French 7224328220260047 A305353 1974.10 EDEC
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