1838
ink
From the collection of National Gallery of Art
Au fait, maitre Barbotteau... is a 1838 ink by Honoré Daumier, a Romanticism work, held at National Gallery of Art.
This lithograph shows a lawyer waving his arms in court. The judge bends over his papers. A woman slumps in the front row, half-asleep. Daumier made this in 1838, before photography existed. He used cheap ink on stone to catch the crowd’s boredom and the lawyer’s big gestures. Lithography lets him draw fast, then print many copies. It’s like watching a silent movie frame. See how the ink blurs at the edges? That’s the stone’s grain showing. Look up lithography next.
Honoré-Victorin Daumier was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870.
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