A Sunday connoisseur, from 'At the Louvre,' published in Le Charivari, February 4, 1865
Original title: A Sunday connoisseur, from 'At the Louvre,' published in Le Charivari, February 4, 1865
kurzbeschreibung
Honoré Daumier made this lithograph on 4 February 1865, and it puts two men deep in conversation before a museum setting. The sheet belongs to his series on the Louvre and survives in the third of four states (Delteil).
Description
Two figures fill the foreground, talking: on the left someone in a fur cap and coat, on the right a man in a hat and suit, both with raised hands as if making an argument. Behind them other visitors and exhibits from the Louvre collection are hinted at. The image stays black and white, the light falls evenly and lets hardly any shadow emerge. Worked in a realist manner, it draws the eye above all to how the two figures deal with one another.
Context
The sheet appeared on 4 February 1865 in the satirical magazine Le Charivari, for which Daumier drew regularly. It belongs to a series called 'At the Louvre' that took aim at how the public behaved in the museum. In this the artist picked up on a growing visitor culture in nineteenth-century Paris, especially the Sunday outing to the museum. In those years the Louvre, after the rebuilding under Napoleon III, had become a much-visited attraction.
Impact
Clear lines and lively gestures give the sheet something immediate and comic. An ironic distance from the figures' enjoyment of art arises without exposing them. Anyone who looks closely starts thinking about the relation between education and pleasure in the museum.
Technique
The lithograph was printed on newsprint, as was usual for Daumier's satirical work. The process allowed fine hatching and graded grey tones, which here shape faces and clothing. The print has come down to us in the third of four states, which suggests the plate was reworked.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)