Daumier Lithographs: Characters & Caricatures

12/23-2/19, Chazen Museum of Art. 608-263-2246.

press release: Daumier Lithographs: Characters and Caricatures is on view at the Chazen Museum of Art through February 19. Distinguished Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Andrew Stevens will present an illustrated lecture on the topic, Daumier’s Satire and Censors, January 26 in the Chazen Auditorium at 5:30 p.m.

This exhibition is drawn from the Chazen’s collection of nearly nine hundred prints by the great French caricaturist Honoré Daumier (1808–1879), and follows the artist’s development as the foremost satirist of his day.

Daumier began his career during a short period of relaxed censorship in France and took advantage of the opportunity to directly caricature King Louis Philippe I. Daumier’s gleeful prints frequently portrayed the king as a pear, and often as corrupt. By 1835 the king had reinstituted censorship of images and Daumier turned his attention to his fellow Parisians: fads of the bourgeoisie, lawyers, and feminists were all regular targets. 

The fictional Robert Macaire, an unrepentant confidence artist always running a new, outrageously fraudulent company, was a frequent subject. When the streets of Paris fall to bits as the result of poorly made asphalt, Macaire is shown as a corner-cutting contractor. When Napoleon III took the throne, Daumier invented Ratapoil (Hairy Rat or Ratskin) as a stand-in for the regime. An agent provocateur and paid supporter of the king, Ratapoil was always shown with a cudgel, his preferred tool for political debate.