I read something about Degas admiring Daumier's lithographs the other day so I ordered a book of said lithographs off t'internet.
A literary discussion in the second Gallery
What time is it please?
I think they're wonderful. They're often very funny and full of beautifully observed images of human character, behaviour and facial expression (obviously quite exaggerated as they're caricatures). Plus they're just great drawings.
They remind me very strongly of Dickens—pompous lawyers, for example (see below). And Daumier—like Dickens—sometimes depicted tragic events without any humour, just moral outrage, as in the second lithograph here which Baudelaire said showed Daumier was "really a great artist".
I dug out my collection of Baudelaire's essays last night and he writes about Daumier at length in "Some French Caricaturists". Here's a snippet:
"To conclude, Daumier extended greatly the limits of his art. He has made a serious art of it; he is a great caricaturist. To assess his true worth, he needs to be analysed both as an artist and as a moralist. As artist, Daumier's distinguished mark is sureness of hand. He draws like the great masters. His drawing is rich and flowing, it is an uninterrupted improvisation and yet it is not just
chic. He has a a wonderful and almost divine visual memory, which takes the place of the model. All his figures stand firmly and are faithfully portrayed in movement. His gift of observation is so sure that it would be quite impossible to find in his drawings a single head that does not seem to fit on the body that carries it. A given nose, a given forehead, an eye, foot hand;
it is all the logic of the scholar transplanted into a light and fleeting art, which competes with the mobility of life itself."
www.bbc.com
.jpg)
