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An Excusable Error. Chickens thinking they have found the cage where they spent their early childhood, plate 21 from La Crinolomanie
Honoré-Victorin Daumier (French, 1808-1879)
1857
- Medium
- Lithograph in black on white wove paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 20.8 × 26.9 cm (8 1/4 × 10 5/8 in.); Sheet: 27.2 × 36 cm (10 3/4 × 14 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of the Print and Drawing Club
- 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
This lithograph focuses on the outlandish crinoline fashion, which lasted about a decade. Among other activities, Daumier’s exuberant crinolines destroy gardens, sweep up street trash, and catch their wearers in high winds and turnstiles. While this plate comes from the Actualités series, it has also been catalogued under the topic La crinolomanie (Crinoline Mania). This sheet and others by Daumier play on the support garment’s incongruous approximation of the human form. Daumier’s images stress that these contraptions, whether cage- or basket- like, were functionally useless.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
