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A Candidate. “Who do you want?... An upright, conscientious, sober man, an industrialist, a man who doesn't need the government to enrich himself, a man familiar with the law, who knows it well, through practice, very long practice... a…
Honoré-Victorin Daumier (model by Édouard Bouvenne (French, active 19th century))
1837
- Medium
- Hand-colored lithograph in black, heightened with gum arabic on ivory wove paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- 36 × 27 cm (14 3/16 × 10 11/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Francey and Martin Gecht Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Daumier could no longer overtly criticize the French government in his art after King Louis Philippe imprisoned him for six months in 1832. In this print, however, the artist derived his humor not from character assassination but from the buildup the perpetually scheming Robert Macaire, an archetypal villain from French popular literature, gives his preferred candidate, the rotund gentleman standing in the middle.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
