Socialism was a growing movement, and both its views on property
and its call for social justice, even economic equality, frightened the
bourgeoisie. In Millet’s sympathetic portrayal of the poor, many saw
a political manifesto.
HONORÉ DAUMIERBecause people widely recognized the
power of art to serve political means, the political and social agita-
tion accompanying the violent revolutions in France and the rest of
Europe in the later 18th and early 19th centuries prompted the
French people to suspect artists of subversive intention. A person
could be jailed for too bold a statement in the press, in literature, in
art—even in music and drama. Realist artist Honoré Daumier
(1808–1879) was a defender of the urban working classes, and in his
art he boldly confronted authority with social criticism and political
protest. In response, the authorities imprisoned the artist. A painter,
sculptor, and, like Dürer, Rembrandt, and Goya, one of the world’s
great printmakers, Daumier produced lithographs(see “Lithogra-
phy,” above) that allowed him to create an unprecedented number of
prints, thereby reaching a broader audience. In addition to produc-
ing individual lithographs for sale, Daumier also contributed satiri-
cal lithographs to the widely read, liberal French Republican journal
Caricature.In these prints, he mercilessly lampooned the foibles andmisbehavior of politicians, lawyers, doctors, and the rich bourgeoisie
in general. His in-depth knowledge of the acute political and social
unrest in Paris during the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 endowed his
work with truthfulness and, therefore, with power.
RUE TRANSNONAIN Daumier’s lithograph Rue Transnonain
(FIG. 30-30) depicts an atrocity with the same shocking impact as
Goya’sThird of May, 1808 (FIG. 30-13). The title refers to a street in
Paris where an unknown sniper killed a civil guard, part of a govern-
ment force trying to repress a worker demonstration. Because the
fatal shot had come from a workers’ housing block, the remaining
guards immediately stormed the building and massacred all of its in-
habitants. With Goya’s power, Daumier created a view of the slaugh-
ter from a sharp, realistic angle of vision. He depicted not the dra-
matic moment of execution but the terrible, quiet aftermath. The
broken, scattered forms lie amid violent disorder, as if newly found.
The print’s significance lies in its factualness. It is an example of the
period’s increasing artistic bias toward using facts as subject, and
not always illusionistically. Daumier’s pictorial manner is rough and
spontaneous. How it carries expressive exaggeration is part of its
remarkable force. Daumier’s work is true to life in content, but his
style is uniquely personal.Realism 801I
n 1798 the German printmaker Alois Senefelder (1771–1834) cre-
ated the first prints using stone instead of metal plates or wooden
blocks. In contrast to earlier printing techniques (see “Woodcuts,
Engravings, and Etchings,” Chapter 20, page 537) in which the artist
applied ink to either a raised or incised surface, in lithography(Greek,
“stone writing”) the printing and nonprinting areas of the plate are
on the same plane.
The chemical phenomenon fundamental to lithography is the
repellence of oil and water. The lithographer uses a greasy, oil-basedcrayon to draw directly on a stone plate and then wipes water onto
the stone, which clings only to the areas the drawing does not cover.
Next, the artist rolls oil-based ink onto the stone, which adheres to
the drawing but is repelled by the water. When the artist presses the
stone against paper, only the inked areas—the drawing—transfer to
the paper. Color lithography requires multiple plates, one for each
color, and the printmaker must take special care to make sure that
each impression lines up perfectly with the previous one so that each
color prints in its proper place.
One of the earliest masters of
this new printmaking process was
Honoré Daumier (FIG. 30-30), whose
politically biting lithographs pub-
lished in a widely read French jour-
nal reached an audience of unprece-
dented size.Lithography
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES30-30Honoré Daumier,Rue
Transnonain,1834. Lithograph,
1 1 5 –^12 . Philadelphia Museum
of Art, Philadelphia (bequest of Fiske
and Marie Kimball).
Daumier used the recent invention of
lithography to reach a wide audience
for his social criticism and political
protest. This print records the horrific
1834 massacre in a workers’ housing
block.1 in.