Honor Daumier (1808-1879) was a French lithographer,
caricaturist , painter and sculptor who gained wide notoriety for his social
and political commentary on the monarchy, politicians, and the middle class. In
his time he produced 4000 lithographs.
Here I’m going to look at one of his lithographs, Gargantua,
1831. I had a look at his work and this is a lithograph that he produced for a weekly
paper called La Caricature. Here in this image he is ridiculing the French king
of that time Louis Phillippe. When I first had a look at this I noticed in the
foreground people and some were taking some objects up on a plank to deposit, which
I think is treasure. Then I read about
it and I was right, but also in the background there are people that worked for
the king picking these things up. Also the king is sitting on a commode.
I like the subject matter as I think that is rather
funny. I do like the various tones of
the black and white colours as it makes it more appealing making it a good
piece of art work. When I first had a look at his work I would have never
thought that they would be lithographs I would have presumed that they would
have been etchings. This comes from my
experience with trying out etchings as I haven’t tried out lithographs before
and I don’t know much about this technique.
