![Honoré Daumier (Marseille, France, 1808–1879, Valmondois, France). <em>The Two Colleagues (Lawyers) (Les deux confrères [Avocats])</em>, 1865–1870. Opaque and transparent watercolor, black ink, and charcoal on wove paper, sheet: 10 × 7 13/16 in. (25.4 × 19.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Barbara Bisgyer Cohn, 2006.14 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2006.14_PS1.jpg)](https://d1lfxha3ugu3d4.cloudfront.net/images/opencollection/objects/size2/2006.14_PS1.jpg)
The Two Colleagues (Lawyers) (Les deux confrères [Avocats])
Honoré Daumier
European Art
The approximately four thousand lithographic caricatures that Honoré Daumier produced were widely circulated in nineteenth-century Paris, where they were appreciated for their sharp satire of contemporary life. A critic of the French monarchy, Daumier often found himself at odds with contemporary censorship laws, serving time in jail in 1832 for ridiculing the French king Charles X. The Legislative Belly, which appeared in the monthly series issued by L’Association Mensuelle, skewers the corrupt conservative members of the Chamber of Deputies, highlighting their bulging stomachs and sneering faces.
Daumier’s works in other mediums reflect his training as a lithographer. The black, sweeping curves of the pompous lawyers’ robes in his watercolor The Two Colleagues call to mind his handling of the lithographic crayon in his prints. In the double-sided drawing Head of an Old Woman in Profile; Study of Heads, he worked in fluid, economic lines to evoke the physiognomies of the Parisian working-class figures that frequently appeared in his images of third-class railway carriages.
Titus Kaphar: These are so playful, they kind of fool you into thinking that they’re not as serious as they are, which I think, to some degree, is the power of the piece itself. It sneaks up on you.
Daumier’s works in other mediums reflect his training as a lithographer. The black, sweeping curves of the pompous lawyers’ robes in his watercolor The Two Colleagues call to mind his handling of the lithographic crayon in his prints. In the double-sided drawing Head of an Old Woman in Profile; Study of Heads, he worked in fluid, economic lines to evoke the physiognomies of the Parisian working-class figures that frequently appeared in his images of third-class railway carriages.
Titus Kaphar: These are so playful, they kind of fool you into thinking that they’re not as serious as they are, which I think, to some degree, is the power of the piece itself. It sneaks up on you.
MEDIUM
Opaque and transparent watercolor, black ink, and charcoal on wove paper
DATES
1865–1870
DIMENSIONS
sheet: 10 × 7 13/16 in. (25.4 × 19.8 cm) (show scale)
SIGNATURE
Lower left: "H Daumier"
COLLECTIONS
European Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
2006.14
CREDIT LINE
Gift of Barbara Bisgyer Cohn
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Honoré Daumier (Marseille, France, 1808–1879, Valmondois, France). The Two Colleagues (Lawyers) (Les deux confrères [Avocats]), 1865–1870. Opaque and transparent watercolor, black ink, and charcoal on wove paper, sheet: 10 × 7 13/16 in. (25.4 × 19.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Barbara Bisgyer Cohn, 2006.14 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2006.14_PS1.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 2006.14_PS1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2006
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