Honor Daumier

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.