Ne vous y frottez pas! (Do not meddle with it!),

1834

With the 1830 ascension of the liberal King Louis-Philippe, draconian press censorship laws were relaxed, giving rise to a number of populist newspapers that were critical of the government and of the bourgeois values it supported. Most notable were those published by Charles Philipon, La Caricature and Le Charivari, which combined journalism with the art of caricature. In 1834, Philipon established L'Association mensuelle, an organization that published a series of satirical lithographs available through subscription. Daumier regularly contributed to Philipon’s enterprises and produced these lithographs for L’Association mensuelle. In the lithograph Le Ventre Législativ, Daumier satirizes the conservative wing of the Chamber of Deputies, or lower house of the French Parliament. Under Louis-Philippe this parliamentary body debated various legal issues, primarily the raising of taxes. Members were appointed by an electoral system that tended to favor wealthy candidates, and Daumier emphasizes the elderly, over-fed nature of the deputies as they sleep in their seats. In Ne vous y frottez pas!, the artist makes a plea for the freedom of the press. A strong, youthful printer with clenched fists defiantly holds the foreground, while the deposed King Charles X, comforted by foreign monarchs, lies on the ground on the right and Louis-Philippe, restrained by legislators, threatens from the left.