His depiction of a crowded third class rail carriage has the gloomy passengers turning to observe this gentleman artist in their presence. The hooded ancient eyes of the old woman stare blindly at the invisible figure of Daumier. Devoid of curiosity or vanity she sits next to a younger woman who unashamedly continues to feed her infant from a naked breast. This moving study sketched c. 1862-1864 shows us Daumier's working method as an artist-journalist. He does not peer in the window of the carriage and sketch his romanticized ideas of what the lower classes look like back in a fancy studio, he enters the grim carriage and travels with them. How many washerwomen did he see climbing up the steps of the river Seine before painting his tender study of La Blanchisseuse (1860-61) and her small daughter, already being trained in the hard labour of her mother. Not only the impoverished masses held Daumier's interests for he equally chose to study the ruling class; the politicians and lawyers, the judges in court and the aristocrats at the opera. Typically, he imbues portraits of the poor with more dignity than the upper classes whom became the butts of his masterful caricatures.

Such a long intense career recording his fellow man led Daumier to be a sympathetic interpreter of other beleaguered historic and fictional figures. Drawing on his experience of ugly rebellious crowd scenes in Paris he was able to create one of the finest Ecce Homo compositions in the history of art. A jeering brutish crowd clamber up the podium where the figure of a fragile but noble Christ stands bound to two naked thieves joined by a neck yoke. A sub-human malevolent figure that resembles the gargoyles of Notre Dame leans over to address the crowd and point an accusing finger at Christ. Particularly poignant is the central focus on a father holding up his young son to see the figure of scorn. Rarely has the depiction of Christ's torment been so realistically evoked. Daumier must have been reminded of this biblical scene when he pushed his way through the barricades and witnessed rough justice in the streets of Paris.

Another victim of mockery that he adopted into his oeuvre late in life is the fictional figure of Don Quixote. In contrast to the  previous representations of Cervantes' hero by French artists Coypel, Natoire, Fragonard, Nanteuil and Gustave Dore - Daumier's sad befuddled Spanish knight is still a champion who straddles his emaciated nag with the utmost dignity. He so identified in some curious way with the knight that he placed him in scenes not found in Cervantes' novel such as two works c. 1870 showing Don Quixote relaxing in a study absorbed in his books.
It is Daumier's canvas of Don Quixote on horseback which remains his most identifiable work.
 

This is due as much to its success as a balanced composition and its beautiful palette of  bright colours, as to the familiarity of its subject. Colour is not something evident in this exhibition as many of Daumier's pictures are rendered in the half-light of candle-lit interiors. Above all, Daumier is a master draughtsman and he is at his most expressive when working quickly in thick black wavering lines smudged with a sepia wash.
The exhibition has been careful to try and showcase Daumier's various talents, we know he understood colour from the Don Quixote canvas and we know he could draw like Rubens from the Triumph of Silenus sketch which still seems to me, to be his comment on capitalism (Silenus) squashing the working classes represented by the liberty-like figure of the struggling woman enchained. We also see his skill as a sculptor in the bust of the Baron and an instantly recognizable bronze statuette of the character Ratapoil based on his terra cotta model of 1851.
 
 
 

Raichel Le Goff for ARTnewsroom.com.