Descendant joyeusement le fleuve de la vie, from "Croquis d'Été"
Original title: Descendant joyeuseument le fleuve de la vie, from "Croquis d'Été"
kurzbeschreibung
Two men in a boat on a river, one tipping a bottle to his lips: this lithograph by Honoré Daumier, dated August 7, 1856, belongs to the series Croquis d'Été and is printed entirely in shades of grey.
Description
The man in front has a bottle at his mouth and is plainly drinking, while his companion behind him sprawls at ease with both hands clasped behind his head. Both wear plain contemporary clothes. A building and some trees point to a rural setting. The arrangement feels restless and keeps the eye on how the two figures play off each other. Grey tones hold throughout the print, and the light falls evenly across it.
Context
Daumier brought out this lithograph in 1856 as part of Croquis d'Été (Summer Sketches), a run of light-hearted everyday scenes. The series appeared in the French satirical journal Le Charivari, for which the artist worked regularly. Pleasures on the water were a favourite subject in the nineteenth century and reflect the growing leisure culture of the bourgeoisie.
Impact
The relaxed postures and the front man's drinking gesture set a cheerful, carefree mood straight away. The restless layout and the caricatural exaggeration of the faces give the sheet its comic edge, enough to raise a smile in the viewer.
Technique
Drawn as a lithograph, the work survives in the second of two states (Delteil). In this process the image is set down on a limestone with greasy chalk and then transferred to paper. The sheet measures 10 1/8 × 14 1/4 inches, the image 7 13/16 × 10 3/16 inches. The greys come from how densely and how loosely the strokes are laid down.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)