Honore Daumier (1808-1879)
The Good Bourgeois: He admires the beauties of nature- Plaine St. Denis
1846
Lithograph
10 x 8 1/2″ (25.4 x 21.6 cm)
Wetmore Print Collection, Connecticut College
FW-0226

Daumier uses his position at the satirical newspaper Le Charivari to critique the lifestyles of this echelon. A rotund bourgeois couple smugly traverse Plaine St. Denis, a royal necropolis turned industrial Parisian suburb by the time of the French Republic,  The irony in this caricature  highlights the immorality of their materialism which fuels the razing of the countryside, unsuccessfully sought out for a promenade of new-found leisure. Daumier implicates this new bourgeois class’ power through a commitment to Realism. In his hands, Realism faithfully represents the authentic attitudes of the French mid-19th-century social classes through exaggerated grimaces at a non-existent landscape.