Lecture 41: Realism—From Daumier to Courbet
is cast in a heroic mold by Daumier, the epitome of a man of the people. In
Daumier, we meet the equal of Goya and Delacroix in their revulsion at the
slaughter of innocents.Adieu mon cher ... (1844) concerns women’s suffrage and the bluestockings.
These liberated Frenchwomen emulated the female novelist George Sand,
and they adopted literary airs while putting aside their domestic duties. This
is one of Daumier’s funniest and most subtle prints from a series about the
bluestockings. Note the unexpected characterization that Daumier gives
to the father, who looks sweetly and happily at the child left in his care
by Madame.In February 1848, Louis Philippe was overthrown, and a republic was
proclaimed. Artists were invited to submit designs for a symbolic image
of the republic. Out of 100 entries, 20 were selected as ¿ nalists, including
Daumier’s The Republic (1848). The year 1848 was one of revolutions
across Europe, one result of which was widespread emigration. The
effects were felt everywhere, including in America, to which many of
the emigrants came. Daumier’s plaster relief entitled The Emigrants
(1848–1849) shows nude ¿ gures on the move, some with heavy loads.
We see again Daumier’s proletarian hero, like the dead father on the Rue
Transnonain; the ¿ gures show the compressed power of certain ¿ gures
by Michelangelo. Compare the relief with Daumier’s oil The Emigrants
(c. 1865–1870). This painting is a continuing part of the series of related
works on émigrés or fugitives that Daumier produced starting in 1848. It has
an urgency that is quite different from the muscular march of the sculpture,
but the dominant compositional motives in both are the diagonal slant and
the endless procession.The brief life of the progressive republic in France gave way to the surprising
landslide election of Louis Napoleon, nephew of the ¿ rst Napoleon, recently
returned from exile, as president of the republic. In 1852, in a coup d’etat, he
declared himself Emperor Napoleon III. An odd combination of enlightened
urban planner and dictator, Louis Napoleon appointed Baron Haussmann as
his city planner to lay out the broad boulevards that transformed Paris into
the city we know today. In the process, old quarters were often demolished,