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Lot Essay
The Comité Honoré Daumier will include this work in their forthcoming supplement to the Daumier catalogue raisonné.
In the mid-19th century a group of French scientists led by Louis Pasteur established a connection between microorganisms and disease. The appalling conditions of the Parisian butcher shops and the threat of bacterial contagion that they posed to the health of the urban populace led to widespread calls for reform in the industry. As an astute chronicler of contemporary society, Honoré Daumier recorded the butchers' abuses in a series of twelve lithographs entitled Messieurs les bouchers (Delteil, nos. 3010-3021) that were published in Charivari between 1857 and 1858. These lithographs were accompanied by an editorial text that exoriated the ethics of the trade and portrayed the butchers as villains. During this period Daumier also executed a small series of watercolors and drawings (Maison, nos. 260-265) which focused on a single butcher absorbed in his work. The present drawing relates to this group and its somber palette and monumental forms present a more sympathetic view of the butcher's difficult labor. In his treatment of the carcass, Daumier was probably inspired by Rembrandt's painting Butchered Ox (1655), which was acquired by the Louvre in 1857.
In the mid-19th century a group of French scientists led by Louis Pasteur established a connection between microorganisms and disease. The appalling conditions of the Parisian butcher shops and the threat of bacterial contagion that they posed to the health of the urban populace led to widespread calls for reform in the industry. As an astute chronicler of contemporary society, Honoré Daumier recorded the butchers' abuses in a series of twelve lithographs entitled Messieurs les bouchers (Delteil, nos. 3010-3021) that were published in Charivari between 1857 and 1858. These lithographs were accompanied by an editorial text that exoriated the ethics of the trade and portrayed the butchers as villains. During this period Daumier also executed a small series of watercolors and drawings (Maison, nos. 260-265) which focused on a single butcher absorbed in his work. The present drawing relates to this group and its somber palette and monumental forms present a more sympathetic view of the butcher's difficult labor. In his treatment of the carcass, Daumier was probably inspired by Rembrandt's painting Butchered Ox (1655), which was acquired by the Louvre in 1857.