Honoré Daumier

Léon Lehmann
Private collection, France

The canvas is not lined, with a nice impasto notably to the white pigment. There are some very fine webs of stable craquellure throughout the composition. There is some slight frame abrasion in areas at the extreme edges. Under UV light, there are some remains of an old varnish, some very fine touches in minor areas at the extreme edges to the above mentioned frame abrasion and two small spots of retouching approx. 1 cm above the head of the figure on the right. This work is in very good original condition.
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Reputed for his satire of bourgeois morality but especially as a precursor of realist painting, Honoré Daumier often comments in his works on the social and political life of 19th century France. Baudelaire rightly considered him as one of the most important painters of caricature but also of modern painting. He was indeed one of the first painters to capture realist subjects of Parisian everyday life, the labour of the working classes, minor news items, behind the scenes of the Hotel Drout and the law courts, but also many works devoted to more intimate subjects such as reading or the playing of board games such as chess or draughts.

This painting, in excellent condition and hitherto unseen at auction, is an accomplished example of Daumier’s art which captures a humble, everyday scene and transforms it into a monumental and universal subject, far from simple genre painting. Another version of this work can be found in the Oskar Reinhart collection at Winterthur in Switzerland.