Robert Macaire au Restaurant

Honoré Victorin Daumier was born February 1808 in Marseilles. In 1815 his family moved to Paris (allowing Daumier’s father to pursue a career as a poet) and eventually Daumier came to study art at the Académie Suisse. Working as an assistant to the publisher, Bélliard, Daumier mastered the art of lithography and made his first copies of drawings from the Louvre.

Through his imagery he targeted the foibles of the bourgeoisie, the corruption of the law and the incompetence of the government through his acerbic pictorial statements. Daumier died in February 1879 in Valmondois at the age of 71. During the course of his life he produced over 4,000 lithographs of political and social comment.