Volume 7, Number 9 · December 1, 1966
Drawn from Life
By Douglas Cooper
Daumier: Man of His Time
by Oliver W. Larkin
McGraw-Hill, 245 pp., $9.95
Daumier
by Robert Rey
Abrams, 160 pp., $15.00
Daumier poses enormous problems for the critic and historian alike. He was very highly praised in his own day, and greatly esteemed by such opposites as Delacroix and Corot. We know almost nothing about the man or his life. His work appeals to and touches us today more by what it says than by its properties of form and color. And the only comparisons which seem to be valid are with artists and novelists whose depth, range, and stature are incomparably greater than his own. Moreover, Daumier exists as a lone figure outside the artistic currents and fields of pictorial interest of his own time. It is therefore very difficult, unless one is violently partisan, to arrive at a fair estimate of his greatness. When Daumier was still very young, Balzac was heard to remark that he had 'Michelangelo in his blood.' When Daubigny looked up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel he exclaimed 'Daumier!' These seem pretty excessive utterances when one looks at Daumier's wobbly operatic nudes and unheroic bourgeois. However, later critics have gone on comparing Daumier to Rembrandt and Goya, while Valéry evokes the names of Dante, Cervantes, and Balzac. This is grand company indeed.
Review, 2898 words
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