Honorie Daumier – Les Gens De Justice

Description

Les Gens de Justice by Honoré Daumier turns the courthouse into a stage for human vanity. Three robed men gather in the foreground, their tall hats and strongly marked profiles forming a compact dark group. A woman stands farther away, and the space between them gives their conversation a pointed theatrical quality.

This image belongs to Daumier’s series of legal satires. It is the 1846 lithograph beginning Quel dommage que cette charmante… femme…, identified as plate 24 in the series. The printed caption is part of the work’s humor, linking the lawyers’ outward dignity to the less dignified thoughts beneath it.

With emphatic lines and sharp contrasts, Daumier makes posture and expression do much of the storytelling. The clustered figures, bundle of papers and formal interior establish the legal setting, while the exaggerated faces turn a brief exchange into an incisive observation of character.

Honoré-Victorin Daumier (February 26, 1808 – February 10 or 11, 1879) 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 Napoleonic Empire in 1870. He earned a living producing caricatures and cartoons in newspapers and periodicals such as La Caricature and Le Charivari, for which he became well known in his lifetime and is still remembered today. He was a republican democrat (working class liberal), who satirized and lampooned the monarchy, politicians, the judiciary, lawyers, the bourgeoisie, as well as his countrymen and human nature in general.

Read our guide to giclée prints, browse more Honoré Daumier prints, or discover another side of his work in The Troubadour.