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WORLDS TOP ARTISTS
For top creative practitioners, see:
Best Artists of All Time.
For the greatest view painters, see:
Best Landcape Artists.
For the greatest still life art, see:
Best Still Life Painters.
For the greatest portraitists
see: Best Portrait Artists.
For the greatest genre-painting, see:
Best Genre Painters.
For the top allegorical painting,
see: Best History Painters.
WORLD'S BEST ART
For a list of the best examples of
Fine Art Painting, by the
world's top artists, see below:
Greatest Paintings Ever
Oils, watercolours, mixed
media from 1300-present.
PRINTMAKING
For more about types of
fine art printing, used by
artists like Honore Daumier,
including engraving, etching,
lithographic and silkscreen
methods, see:
Printmaking: History, Types.
WHAT IS ART?
For an explanation of the
aesthetic issues surrounding
the creative visual arts, see:
Art Definition, Meaning
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Biography
Born in Marseilles, Daumier grew up in
Paris where he (briefly) studied drawing
and afterwards lithography:
the latter being the latest technique of the time for the replication
of drawn images. The Revolution of 1830 gave him the opportunity to express
his republican sentiments in his caricatures, of which he supplied over
4,000 to a variety of Parisian journals. During the 1830s these political
cartoons - published in the newspapers La Caricature and Le
Charivari - included Gargantua (1831), an earthy caricature
of Louis-Philippe's corrupt government, and the famous Rue Transnonain
14 April 1834 (1834), in which he abandons the satirical manner to
show the pathetic aftermath of a military slaughter of civilians. Gargantua
earned him a spell in prison, after which as censorship tightened to turned
more to social satire.
Thus, in 1836, he began a series of drawings based on an invented character
Robert Macaire, personifying the chicanery of commercial society. He produced
several great series of lithographs in the 1840s, for example Ancient
History (1842), a lampoon of Neoclassicism.
His targets were often pomposity and pretentiousness, as in the series
Men of Justice (1845-8): here the flowing robes and black-and-white
contrast of the legal costume allowed impressive pictorial effects. He
invented the character of Ratapoil, of which he also made a sculpture
in bronze (1850; Louvre, Paris) to satirize the unscrupulous brigands
of Napoleon III.
Painting
In the mid 1840, Daumier became increasingly
interested in fine art painting,
while still producing lithographs for his livelihood. He entered the competition
for an allegorical figure of the Republic in 1848: he was placed eleventh,
but never completed the painting, the sketch for which is now in the Louvre,
Paris. Although realist painter friends like Corot
(1796-1875), Millet (1814-75) and Theodore Rousseau
(1812-67) encouraged him to persevere, too much of his energy was spent
on producing his lithographed drawings. Early allegorical paintings he
did during this period owe some debt to Rubens, for example, The Miller,
his Son, and the Ass (1848-9; Burrell Collection, Glasgow), after
which most of his painting was inspired by contemporary events, for example
The Uprising (1848; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.)
and everyday scenes, such as Third Class Carriage (1863-5; National
Gallery of Canada, Ottawa). The sculptural nature of his drawing is seen
in The Washerwoman (1863-4; Louvre, Paris).
Daumier often depicted clowns and acrobats in his paintings (for example,
Saltimbanque, 1855-60; Louvre, Paris) as well as theatre scenes
(Crispin and Scapin, 1858-60; Louvre, Paris). The picture Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza (1870; Courtauld Institute Galleries, London)
is one of a group of paintings on this subject, showing the loose handling
and calligraphic brushwork of his late years. His paintings were not given
the degree of finish expected by his contemporaries, but they have an
evocative quality resulting from this sketchiness which gives them a particular
appeal today. Daumier uses a tentative and broken line, so that the contours
are made indefinite by the surrounding light, in an Impressionistic manner.
In his final years his eyesight failed
and he was only saved from destitution by the generosity of friends, notably
Corot.
Reputation and Legacy
Daumier's exceptional talent for satirical
caricature rested upon two qualities: first, his outstanding draughtsmanship,
which was strongly influenced by Rembrandt
(1606-69); second, his acute observation of individuals and situations.
In his powerful but unsentimental realism, he was close to the more famous
artists such as Gustave Courbet (1819-77), while
Balzac once commented that there was something of Michelangelo in Daumier,
due to the sculptural modelling of some of his paintings and his noted
frieze of displaced persons. Despite his lack of commercial success as
a fine artist, he was revered by certain critics and collectors, as well
as a wide circle of friends which included Degas
(1834-1917), Baudelaire, and Delacroix (1798-1863).
Works by Honore Daumier
Drawings and paintings by Honore Daumier
can be seen in many of the world's best art
museums, including the Louvre, Paris.
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