Grand Staircase of the Palace of Justice

Honoré Daumier was the great caricaturist of nineteenth century Paris, and his paintings have the same force as his cartoons. Figures are built from bold, rough strokes and deep shadows, and faces are exaggerated just enough to show character: lawyers, travellers, laundresses, art lovers and Don Quixote. He was born in Marseille in 1808 and grew up in Paris. He made over four thousand lithographs for satirical papers such as La Caricature and Le Charivari. His cartoon Gargantua, mocking King Louis-Philippe, earned him a spell in prison in 1832. Alongside his press work he painted about five hundred pictures, largely for himself. The Third-Class Carriage is the best known, and Don Quixote and Sancho Panza was a subject he returned to again and again. Look at the loose, almost sculptural brushwork. His paintings were little known in his lifetime and were only shown together in 1878. He died in Valmondois in 1879.