News of the Day
Original title: – You take your pin-gun in your hand like this... you fire... puff... this kills ten times more people than the old system... – Ah, yes papa, this is what one calls progress, from "News of the Day"
kurzbeschreibung
A father holds a needle gun out to his daughter and explains what it can do: Honoré Daumier's lithograph of 1866, part of the "Actualités" series, mocks the arms race of the industrial age.
Description
Up front on the right stands a man in a jacket, tie and checked trousers, aiming a rifle with a needle-style breech at a young girl. His face is confident; the daughter has her arms folded and looks worried. Behind them there is nothing but a plain sky with clouds, all of it in black and white. A caption runs below the image, summing up what the scene says.
Context
Daumier drew this caricature for the satirical magazine "Le Charivari" in August 1866. The needle gun, introduced in Prussia in 1865, was seen as a technical advance with a high rate of fire. In France at the time there was intense debate about the industrialization of weapons production and Prussian armament efforts.
Impact
An ironic tension arises between the father's casual gesture and the child's uneasy reaction. Daumier uses an everyday scene to expose the absurdity of technical efficiency in weapons designed to kill. A few lines are enough to sharpen the satire.
Technique
Lithography on newsprint, a process typical of Daumier's political and social caricatures. The drawing was made with greasy chalk on the stone and then printed; fine hatching and strong contrasts define the style.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)