Daumier

Studies in World Art, Book 117

By: Edward Lucie-Smith

Narrated by: Jim Spring

Every now and then, an exhibition comes along that hits you in the solar plexus. The compact Daumier show at the Royal Academy in London is one of those. It is housed in the moderately sized Sackler Galleries on the top floor of the building, not in the main exhibition rooms below, where it would be swallowed up. Most of the works on view are quite small. Very few are more than medium sized. For the most part, the color is subdued. Indeed, some of the paintings seem monochromatic until you examine them more closely, The range of subjects is, if not exactly restricted, not hugely wide. It includes ordinary people seen in the streets, plus images of street entertainers, images of judges and advocates in the law courts, scenes in artists' studios, and of customers looking a prints in print-sellers booths or shops. There is also a series of illustrations to Cervantes' Don Quixote.

Essentially this matches the range of subject matter that is to be found quite regularly in northern European genre painting, from the 17th century onward. That is, Daumier’s paintings seem at first to belong firmly in the realm of paintings made as commodities. The artist is not commissioned by a patron. He chooses his own subject matter. However, the subject matter is tailored to fit a known canon of taste.

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