Honore Daumier: Cartooning

 

"Gargantua" by Honore Daumier*

"Honore Daumier turned his heavy artillery on the Orleans politicians, and each week, when his cartoon appeared, ministers of state shook in their boots. After taking a shot at King Louis-Philippe, Daumier was locked up, but he bore his sentence cheerfully and on his release, proceeded in exactly the same direction. When his paper folded, he went to another, and to his death, earned his bread by cartooning.

He lived in an old house on the Quai d'Anjou in the most ancient quarter of the city with his wife, Marie, a seamstress. In 1848, the year of his marriage, he began to paint in oils and his canvases, though rejected by official juries, won the admiration of the best men in Paris. He derived no money from his oils and to keep alive depended on his lithographs, sometimes slaving at eight stones simultaneously to earn a brief interlude for painting. At the end of the day, sitting by his window above the Seine, he would fix his tired eyes on the boats, the fishermen, the laundresses and poor mothers scrubbing children, and he would remark to himself, 'I have my art to comfort me, but what have these wretched men and women to live for?'

His friends were the celebrities of Paris - Delacroix, Courbet, Baudelaire, and Gautier - but he did not seek them. They assembled in his humble quarters in the spirit of homage, sat on the floor because there were no chairs, smoked and drank beer together. They knew who was the great man among them. One night, while Daumier was busy with his lithographs, a remark was passed. 'Isn't it too bad,' the speaker asked, 'that old Daumier has to work for a living?' Overhearing the comment, Daumier turned, straightened up, and with a toss of his magnificent head, replied very slowly, underlining each word. 'It isn't too bad that I have to work,' he said. 'The trouble is that I have to work too hard, for my eyes are getting pretty bad. But I must remind you kind-hearted gentlemen of something: you have an income - but I have a public. And I'll take the public.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Famous Artists and Their Models" by Thomas Craven.) 

* "Probably the most famous of Daumier’s caricatures was one he completed in 1831, entitled 'Gargantua' (see above). It was one of the first major political lithographs completed by Daumier. In the work, we see King Louis-Philippe seated on his high throne, which is actually a giant commode!  It is an unflattering caricature of the monarch but this pear-shaped head was Daumier’s constant caricature depiction of Louis-Philippe.  From the king’s mouth runs a stepping board to the ground on which the servants carry the sacks of money which, on reaching the top, tip into the king’s mouth.  Daumier is portraying the king as a devourer of his subjects’ hard-earned money." https://mydailyartdisplay.uk/2013/11/20/honore-daumier-lithographs-and-caricatures/