Page 11 - G19C Maastricht Catalog

Honoré Daumier

HEADS OF TWO CHILDREN (TÊTES D’ENFANTS)

While he was most well-known for his subjects depicting political
cartoons and humorous caricatures, Têtes d’Enfants reveals a
different aspect of Daumier’s art. Here, he shows two young children
with an intimacy that one rarely sees in his work. Although they have
not been identified, their individualistic features make them much
more personal than the anonymous figures that generally populate
Daumier’s figure pictures.

In his article on unpublished works by Daumier in the Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, Karl Eric Maison compares Têtes d’Enfants to a portrait
of a girl, which was finished after Daumier’s death. He comments:
“A comparison with the very powerful, yet tender and moving
sketch of Two Little Children, in contrast [to the above-mentioned
portrait], proves again that the true Daumier can never be “pretty.”
This very beautiful study (panel, 22 by 27.5 cm.) was part of a series
of twelve sketches sold by M. Leroy of Versailles to the firm of
Tempelaere, in or before 1895. M Groesbeck of Amsterdam bought
the present picture from Tempelaere in 1895, and it was in his
collection until 1956. Nothing had been added to this sketch, except
the initials H.D., in Roman capitals: not a serious attempt, therefore,
to imitate the well-known initial-signature.” (Gazette des Beaux-Arts,
vol. LI, May-June 1958, p. 342).

Daumier’s paintings, the majority having been executed after 1848,
point to the direction of a more modern art. There is an emphasis on
an « impressionistic » style before the term was codified and Têtes
d’Enfants, either deliberately or accidentally, gives a preview of what
would later become Impressionism.

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