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Rainey Knudson

29. Honoré Daumier, A Meeting of Lawyers

Honoré Daumier, A Meeting of Lawyers, c. 1860. Oil on wood, approx. 7.5 × 9.5 inches

Few artists have mined the subjects of human greed, folly, and heartlessness as enthusiastically as the caricaturist Honoré Daumier. In addition to this painting, the MFAH has around 150 of his satirical political cartoons, lithographs that were Daumier’s bread and butter. Looking at those cartoons now, not knowing the day’s news he was lampooning, drives home how insubstantial and fleeting the day’s news can be. But his paintings—which inspired Van Gogh, among others—are less topical. Take these somewhat ignoble lawyers: these guys may not have had highway billboards, but they gather like gloomy, self-important vultures just the same.



 

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