A horsemeat banquet, from 'News of the day,' published in Le Charivari, March 29, 1865
Original title: A horsemeat banquet, from 'News of the day,' published in Le Charivari, March 29, 1865
kurzbeschreibung
Honoré Daumier's 1865 lithograph A Horse-Meat Banquet turns a Parisian kitchen into a small comic stage: two figures chat with obvious enthusiasm over a horse's head and the offal that goes with it. The joke has a sharper edge, poking at the food shortages of the day and the emerging debate over whether horse meat belonged on the table.
Description
Two figures in everyday clothes and caps face each other in a plainly furnished kitchen, their talk plainly circling the horse's head and innards before them. Cooking utensils hang on the wall behind them, and it is these, more than anything, that mark the room as a kitchen. Everything stays within a single tone, the light spread evenly as lithography allows. Caricature does the real work here: posture, gesture and expression carry the exchange and draw the eye first.
Context
The print appeared on 29 March 1865 in the French satirical journal Le Charivari, as part of the series News of the Day. During the 1860s horse meat was a touchy subject in France, tied closely to famine and to public argument over how people should eat. Daumier used the lithograph to step into the day's news and comment on it with a critical eye.
Impact
The humour lands at once, yet it is aimed with care, which is why the image sticks in the memory. Out of the two figures' conversation comes an ironic distance that nudges the viewer toward thinking about the social conditions behind the joke.
Technique
Daumier drew the image as a lithograph on newsprint; this is the second state of two (Delteil). The medium allowed delicate lines and graded shading that suited the caricatural drawing. The sheet measures 30 × 29.4 cm.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)