← Honoré Daumier

La Dernière Semaine avant L'Ouverture du Salon de Peinture, from Actualités, published in Le Charivari, May 9, 1857

Original title: La Dernière Semaine avant L'Ouverture du Salon de Peinture, from Actualités, published in Le Charivari, May 9, 1857

Artist

Honoré Daumier

Date

May 9, 1857

Medium

Lithograph; second state (Delteil)

Dimensions

Sheet: 10 1/16 × 14 7/16 in. (25.5 × 36.7 cm) Image: 8 1/4 × 10 3/16 in. (21 × 25.9 cm)

Credit line

The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962

kurzbeschreibung

Honoré Daumier made this lithograph in 1857, showing three artists in the final rush before the Paris Salon. It appeared in the satirical newspaper Le Charivari as part of the Actualités series.

Description

Three painters fill a studio: two stand at a large canvas, working on it, while the third sits and paints as well. Each holds a palette. On the canvas, a historical or mythological scene is hinted at, suggested by the figures and the traces of color on the palettes. Curtains and a plain wall form the backdrop. Gray tones dominate, as is typical for lithography, and the format recalls a newspaper page.

Context

On May 9, 1857, Daumier published the print in Le Charivari, a Paris daily famous for its political and social satire. The Paris Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, took place annually; the week before the opening meant intense work and nerves for artists. Daumier, himself a painter, caricatured the hectic pace and ambition of his colleagues. The Actualités series, to which this print belongs, took up current events and social phenomena.

Impact

The viewer's eye is immediately drawn to the artists' concentrated, almost frantic poses, which make the scene lively and comic. Because the colors are reduced to gray tones and the lines remain clear, attention shifts to the gestures and the work process. With light irony, Daumier exposes the absurd competition among artists without making them ridiculous.

Technique

For this print, Daumier chose lithography, a planographic process in which a design is drawn with greasy chalk on a limestone block. This allowed him to produce fine lines and soft shading that give the figures and the space a sense of volume. The work exists in its second state (Delteil) and served as the printing matrix for Le Charivari.

AI-generated description text

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)