1838
ink
From the collection of National Gallery of Art
Le Crocodile is a 1838 ink by Honoré Daumier, a Romanticism work, held at National Gallery of Art.
Daumier’s 1838 lithograph shows a man in a top hat staring into a shop window filled with cuts of meat and baskets of produce. The strange mix—elegant hat, raw meat—feels off, like he’s out of place. His blank face makes you wonder: what is he really looking at? Is it food? Or something else? Daumier made this using lithography, a printing method where grease and water repel each other on stone. It lets artists draw fast and loose, then print many copies cheaply. This one looks rough but full of life. Want to see how he did it? Look up lithography.
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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