By combining Daumier's drawings with selected examples of his paintings, prints, and bronzes, this book traces the evolution of the artist's succinct and emphatically expressive style from its roots in the European tradition exemplified by Rembrandt, Rubens, and Fragonard to its modern manifestations in the works of Degas, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Beckmann. In the course of his long and productive career Daumier returned again and again to favorite themes, often after considerable lapses of time. Thus the works here are grouped by their subject matter into six sections: studies of individual figures and faces; narrative scenes inspired by history or literature; views of contemporary urban and domestic life; dramatic portrayals of lawyers in court; depictions of street performers; and episodes in the wanderings of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

Daumier and Millet, two of the most important French artists of the mid 19th century, each produced drawings that were innovative and influential. This book by Bruce Laughton - a critical and comparative study of these drawings - investigates the artistic relationship that existed between Daumier and Millet. Laughton suggests that the two worked at a critical phase in the development of drawing as a language of expression in French art and that a study of their work reveals how new methods of conception and perception in drawing came about.

The life and work of one of the most productive and renowned French artists of the nineteenth century is examined in this beautiful book. Known primarily in his own time for the penetrating social and political commentary of his cartoons, Daumier is now equally admired for his drawings, watercolours, and oil paintings. Bruce Laughton draws on new material to present the most comprehensive treatment of this multi-faceted artist in two decades. Laughton traces Daumier's professional life: his early career as a lithographer-cartoonist, when his fame as a social satirist spread through all classes of French citizens; his attempts to change direction as an 'artist-peintre' with the advent of the Second French Republic; his painstaking production of watercolours for connoisseurs (and his simultaneous parody of these people); and then the independent development of his oil painting techniques alongside his continued production of lithographs and designs for wood engravings. Laughton also discusses Daumier's private life, investigating, for example, his view of the lawcourts, the significance of his 'Saltimbanques' or wandering entertainers, and the personal symbolism of his images of Don Quixote. In conclusion Laughton describes Daumier's late career, which included both personal disasters and artistic achievements and ended in the most unsung retirement of any artist of comparable stature in the nineteenth century. An appendix to the book provides transcriptions and commentary on five of Daumier's account books, which give clues about how he lived and how his works were regarded.

Popular lithographic series on lawyers, on married life, on liberated women, etc. Includes Un Héros de Juillet, Mai 1831, La Crise Actuelle Se Complique!, Le Passé. Le Présent. L'venir, Melle Etienne-Joconde-Cunégonde-Bécassine de Constitutionnel, Voyage À Travers Les Populations Empressées, Rue Transnonain, La Tentation, Quand Le Diable Devint Vieux, and more.

Recently the art world learned that for nearly 50 years the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg had been holding a major trove of work from German private collections--treasures which were generally thought to have been lost or destroyed. This splendid volume reveals a magnificent collection of these works, including glories by Goya, Daumier, Menzel, Cezanne, and Toulouse-Lactrec. 200 illustrations, 89 in color.

Due to the technological advances of the nineteenth century, an abundance of black drawing media exploded onto the market. Charcoal, conte crayon, and fabricated black chalks and crayons; fixatives; various papers; and many lifting devices gave rise to an unprecedented amount of experimentation. Indeed, innovation became the rule, as artists developed their own unique—and often experimental—processes. The exploration of black media in drawing is inextricably bound up with the exploration of black in prints, and this volume presents an integrated study that rises above specialization in one over the other. Noir brings together such diverse artists as Francisco de Goya, Maxime Lalanne, Gustave Courbet, Odilon Redon, and Georges Seurat and explores their inventive works on paper. Sidelining labels like “conservative” or “avant-garde,” the essays in this book employ all the tools that art history and modern conservation have given us, inviting the reader to look more broadly at the artists’ methods and materials. This volume accompanies an eponymous exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from February 9 to May 15, 2016.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Sept. 13, 2011-Mar. 4, 2012.