I keep finding new printmakers and artists whose styles I like, but I also want to explore more of the artists I’ve already found. I am going to try to find a good balance between posting artists I’ve posed before and newly discovered artists. Feedback on that balance is definitely welcome.
The new artist for today is Honoré Daumier, whos life spanned much of the 19th century. He painted and sculpted, but his biggest output was caricatures/political cartoons, done by lithography. and wood engraving, estimated at around 5000 total. Some of his stuff satirized social trends and some was political. Much of it was created for immediate publication in specific periodicals. He earned what might be thought of as the badge of honor for a political cartoonist by being jailed for his work, not once, but twice.
Today’s print is visually striking and incredibly well done, but the emotional tone is different from most of his prints, which were satiric. Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1834, is not a lovely , feel-good print, but it is beautifully done and conveys the intended tone very effectively. In 1830, the reigning Bourbon monarch was deposed and replaced by a popularly selected cousin named Louis-Phillipe, Duke of Orleans. In 1834, the government of Louis-Phillipe imposed restrictions on freedom of the press (in the form of town criers) and freedom of association, which triggered violent protests. During one of these protests in Paris, a government solider was shot from a house in the Rue Transnonain. The army retaliated by killing all 19 of the inhabitants of that house the next day. Daumier created a lithograph depicting his imagination of the scene inside the house immediately following that massacre. Not a warm and fuzzy subject or picture, but a beautifully done, visually arresting image.
Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1834
