A travers les Ateliers - Fichtre! . . . Epatant! . . . Sapristi! . . . Superbe! . . . ca parle! . . . (Through the studios - The Deuce! . . . Amazing! . . . Good God! . . . Superb! . . . it speaks! . . . ),

1862

Until 1860, the celebrated caricaturist Daumier regularly supplied scathing anti-monarchist lithographs to several populist newspapers. He then devoted himself to painting, while occasionally contributing lithographs and wood engravings to more recently established journals, including Le Boulevard, issued in 1862 and 1863. Daumier provided eleven lithographs to this publication, including these two humorous observations of the fashionable but rapidly changing Parisian art world. In the studio scene, artists crowd around a colleague’s painting, which is not visible to us. It is thought that the broadly smiling man closest to the canvas could be Daumier himself. The outdoor setting pokes fun at the Impressionists’ determined efforts to paint outdoors in order to record changing light effects in nature.