Honoré Daumier: 10 works

'Although born in Marseilles, the painter, sculptor, and caricaturist Honoré Daumier spent most of his life in Paris, where he was centrally situated to record the events of a turbulent era: the revolutions of 1848, the rise and fall of the Second Empire, the Crimean and Franco-Prussian wars, and the Paris Commune. Beginning in 1830, he contributed more than 4,000 political and social caricatures to the daily and weekly journals of Paris, and elevated both the role of political commentary and the art of lithography by merging aesthetics with function.'

'When Daumier began to concentrate on this series of works, his eyesight was failing and he was falling into financial distress.'

'Daumier was first published in a satirical weekly called La Silhouette, and there he received his first taste of both censorship and republican politics. Daumier fought his political battles with his lithographic crayon.'

'His work later exerted considerable influence on Manet and Degas.'

'Poverty forced Daumier to begin work at an early age; he once took a job as a messenger for the city's law courts, where he was exposed to the complexities and inequities of the legal system.'

'In the 1860s, Daumier devoted a loosely connected series of drawings to the magical world of sideshows and the circus. He had always been fascinated by this special way of life, but the series became especially timely due to Baron Haussmann's urban planning reforms, which drove street entertainers to the outskirts of the city.'

'In the 1860s the great caricaturist Daumier produced a number of drawings exploring the reactions of viewers to works of art.'

'Known for his satirical, touching portrayals of contemporary life, Honoré Daumier changed direction temporarily after seeing a newly hung collection of paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard in the Musée du Louvre in 1869. Struck by the expressive power of Fragonard's rapid brushstroke, Daumier paid homage to his predecessor in a series of paintings that included The Studio.'

'Refugees were one of several subjects Honoré Daumier returned to in his work over many decades, and individual works are difficult to date. It seems likely, however, that Daumier was struck by the movement of large numbers of people uprooted by war, repression or disaster in Europe in the 1840s and early 1850s.'

'Pairs or groups of lawyers are the subject of many of Daumier's drawings.'