Chronology

26 February 1808 Honoré-Victorin Daumier is born in Marseille, on Place Saint Martin, the third child and first son of Jean-Baptiste Daumier (1777-1851) and Cécile-Catherine Philip. Jean-Baptiste is an artisan (glazier and picture framer) by trade but pastoral poet by vocation.

1816 Jean-Baptiste obtains a clerk job at the court of the bankruptcy judges. His wife and children arrive in Paris in September.

1817-1819 Jean-Baptiste is introduced to Louis XVIII, and his tragedy Philippe II is produced at a small theater on the Rue Chantereine (probably Honorés first exposure to the stage). But he loses his job and family finances are meager. They live at eight different residences, mostly on the Left Bank or on the island quays, over the next dozen years.

1820 Jean-Baptiste finds a job for his twelve year old son, Honoré, as a saute-ruisseau, or errand boy, for a bailiff, where he gathers his first impressions of the law courts.

1821 Daumier takes a different job as an assistant at Delaunay?s bookshop in the galleries of the Palais Royal, the teeming center of Parisian book and print commerce, as well as cafes, gaming houses, and brothels. He starts drawing by copying at the Louvre.

1822 Is introduced by his father to Alexandre Lenoir, artist, archaeologist, and founder of the Musée des Monuments Français. Studies drawing with Lenoir briefly and is exposed to academic methods and antique casts, as well as to the works of Rubens, Titian, and Rembrandt.

1823-1828 Attends the Academie Suisse, where artists draw and paint from the model cheaply and without formal instruction. Forms lifelong friendships with the painter Philippe-Auguste Jeanron and the sculptor Antoine-Augustin Preault.

1825 At age seventeen apprentices to Zephirin Belliard, lithographer and publisher of sentimental portraits.

1829 Creates his first caricatures for the weekly La Silhouette, published by Charles Philipon (future founder of La Caricature), Victor Ratier, and others.

1830 After the July Revolution, takes advantage of the relaxation of censorship laws to create his first political caricatures of the new deputies and of Louis-Philippe and his ministers.

1831 On December 16 his caricature Gargantua, a grotesque depiction of Louis-Philippe as Rabelaiàs giant, is submitted to the Dépot légal. Later in the month, it is seized by the police at the Aubert caricature shop in the Galerie Véro-Dodat and orders are given to destroy the stone and all remaining impressions.

1832 On February 9 La Caricature, a weekly satirical journal founded by Philipon and Gabriel Aubert in November 1831, and in constant battle with the government, publishes its first Daumier caricature, an attack on the wellfed supporters of Louis-Philippe.
On February 23 Daumier is trialed for Gargantua, along with the publisher Aubert and the printer Delaporte. All three are sentenced to six monthà imprisonment and a 500franc fine, but only Daumier is required to serve his sentence.
At Philipon?s suggestion, Daumier begins sculpting satirical busts of July Monarchy politicians to serve as models for a series of lithographs; the first of these appears in La Caricature on April 26.
On November 11 is transferred to the àasylumé of Dr. Casimir Pinel at Chaillot, a more relaxed imprisonment, to which Philipon has preceded him. Works on a series of watercolors, Chimeras of the Imagination. Among his first fully developed compositions, they are transferred to stone by Charles Ramelet and published in Le Charivari, a daily founded by Philipon and Aubert on December 1.

1833 On February 22 Daumier is released from prison. Moves away from his family to a communal living situation on Rue Saint-Denis with other artists, including Paul Huet and Louis Cabat. Other associates at this time are Préault and Jeanron, as well as Narcisse Diaz de la Pe–a.

1834 Produces five largeformat political prints for Philipon?s subscription series the Association Mensuelle, including Ne vous y frottez pas!! Enfoncé Lafayette and Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834.
On October 9 La Caricature lists a Daumier watercolour Un Cabaret du village among the works to be reproduced in upcoming issues of the Revue des Peintres.

1835 On August 27 the last issue of La Caricature includes Daumier?s C?était vraiment bien la peine de nous faire tuer. Following the socalled September laws, which effectively prohibit all political caricature until the revolution of
1848, Daumier begins caricatures of everyday life. In the first series, Types Français, are fullfigure caricatures representing different trades.

1836-1838 Caricaturana, a series featuring the popular àRobert Macaire,é an opportunistic swindler, by turn doctor, lawyer, speculator, banker, or merchant, appears week by week in Le Ckarivari, with captions by Philipon.

1839-1843 Daumier is producing three or four caricatures a week for Le Charivari and the second La
Caricature. Also draws extensively for wood engravings appearing in newspapers and books, such as Physiologies (1841-42), Les Français peints par euxm?mes (1840-42), Némésis medicale illustrée (1840), and La Grande Ville (1842).
Thackeray writes at length about Daumier?s Robert Macaire in The Paris Sketch Book (1840), and Fortunatus includes Daumier in his Dictionnaire satirique des célebrités contemporaines (1842). Even with such productivity and celebrity, Daumier has to borrow money and sell his furniture to settle debts.
From December 1841 to January 1843 creates Histoire ancienne, a series of spoofs of classical heroes, philosophers, gods, and goddesses, for Le Charivari.

1845 From March 1845 to October 1848 publishes Les Gens de Justice, forty caustic caricatures of Parisian lawyers plying their trade.
In May 1845, Baudelaire praises Daumier?s draughtsmanship in his Salon review: àNous ne connaissons, à Paris, que deux hommes qui dessinent aussi bien que M. Delacroix, I?un d?une mani?re analogue, I?autre dans une méthode contraire.3ƒ4L?un est M. Daumier, le caricaturiste; I?autre, M. Ingres, le grand peintre, I?adorateur rusé de Raphael.é (We only know two man in Paris who draw as well as Mr. Delacroix, one using the same method as him and the other a contrary one. They are Mr. Daumier, the cartoonist and Mr. Ingres, the great painter, worshipper of Rafaelé)

1846 By this date, and possibly as early as 1841, Daumier is living and working on the top floors of 9 Quai d?Anjou, on the Ile Saint-Louis, a fertile enclave of artistic and bohemian life, while its frequent visitors include Delacroix, Corot, Theodore Rousseau, Jules Dupre, and Antoine-Louis Barye. Living at 17 Quai d?Anjou at the Hôtel Pimodan (former Hôtel Lauzun) are Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, and Boissard de Boisdenier, whose notorious hashish parties are depicted by Daumier.
On February 2 a son is born to Daumier and his longtime mistress Marie-Alexandrine d?Assy (known as Didine). Marries Didine on April 16; their child dies within two years.

1847 Attends February 15 meeting at the home of Barye to plan an independent salon. Others include Ary Scheffer, Gabriel-Alexandre Decamps, Dupré, Delacroix, Jeanron, Charles Jacque, and Rousseau.

1848 On March 2 Daumier comments on the February Revolution with the lithograph Le Gamin de Paris aux Tuileries, the first of several political caricatures produced during a brief respite from censorship. On March 5 a nonjuried salon opens with nothing submitted by Daumier, who has undoubtedly been painting for several years. On March 18 with the encouragement of Courbet and François Bonvin, Daumier enters the competition for an image of the Republic; his entry is selected as one of the twenty finalists and he is given 500 francs to produce a finished work.

1849 Delacroix reports, in a February journal entry, Baudelairés comment about Daumier?s difficulties finishing work. Daumier enters The Miller, His Son, and the Ass in the Salon (after entering and then retrieving his Magdalen); critics find fault with Daumier?s color. During the summer outbreak
of cholera he sends Didine to the Normandy coast.

1850 On October 11 Daumier publishes the first definitive Ratapoil in Le Charivari. The related sculpture of this scrawny Bonapartiste provokes an ecstatic response from historian and fellow republican Jules Michelet.

1850-1852 Creates the series Idylles parlementaires, in which naked legislators cavort within rococo frames.
Sometime early in 1851 his father, Jean-Baptiste, dies at Charenton insane asylum, which he has recently entered.
After Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte?s decree of February 1852, censorship of printed images is restored and Daumier returns to social caricature. He indirectly criticizes the regime with caricatures on such issues as the Haussmannization of Paris and the Crimean War.

1853 Makes the first of nearly annual summer visits to Valmondois and Barbizon, where he has friendships with Millet, Rousseau, Corot, Geoffroy-Dechaume, Daubigny, and others.

1855 Attends a Sunday evening meeting at the Barbizon home of Théodore Rousseau, with Diaz, Dupré, Millet, Barye, Félix Ziem, and writers; an illustrated edition of the fables of La Fontaine is planned.

1857 On October 1 Baudelaire publishes àQuelques Caricaturistes Français,é with prominence given to Daumier, in Le Présent Revue universelle.

1858-1859 Baudelaire writes to a friend of Daumier?s nearly fatal illness.

1860 In mid-March Daumier, after twenty-seven years at the journal, is dimissed from Le Charivari.
On July 8 a wood engraving of The Drunkenness of Silenus is published in Le Temps illustrateur universel with an enthusiastic article by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt: à...C?est que ce n?est pas seulement un dessinateur charivarique, c?est un grand artiste que Daumier. Il a sa place marquée dans la petite pléiade de ces maItres du crayon dont la postérité accueillera la popularité...é (à...Daumier is not only a charivarique cartoonist, he is a great artist. He belongs to the selected group of the pencil masters who will be popular in the posterity...é)

1861 Daumier concentrates on painting and drawing. In February The Laundress and The Drinkers are shown in a benefit exhibition at the Galerie Martinet. The Laundress appears in the Salon.
A negative article by Philipon3ƒ4àAbdication de Daumier 1eré3ƒ4appears in the Journal Amusant, September 21, and later in Le Charivari, December 21.

1862 In severe financial difficulties, Daumier sells furniture and borrows money. Sells paintings to
Rousseau and Louis-Charles Steinhel Giacomelli, who at this time published a catalogue raisonné of Raffet?s prints, commissions a watercolor, Collectors in which Giacomelli is shown examining Raffet?s prints. A letter from Daumier to dealer Beugniet, probably from this period, reports that a àpetite t?teé awaits only a frame and asks for payment.

1863 Moves to Montmartre to a quick succession of different addresses, ending up on the Boulevard de Clichy.
His drawing The Drunkenness of Silenus is taken by the state in payment for the unfulfilled Magdalen commission of 1848.
On December 18 is welcomed back to Le Charivari, where old friends give him a banquet.

1864 On February 26, 1864, George A. Lucas, American engineer, purchases Interior of an Omnibus. He also commissions two railway-carriage drawings.

1865 Champfleury publishes his Histoire de la caricature moderne, which features Daumier and includes a poem on the artist by Baudelaire.
In October 1865, Daumier moves to a house at Valmondois that he leases for nine years.

1867 His eyesight begins to fail, yet he produces some of his strongest printed work in attacks on imperialism and Prussian militarism during a relaxation of censorship.

1869-1870 Enters three watercolors3ƒ4Visitors in an Artist’s Studio, Judges in the Court of Assize and The Two Doctors and Death3ƒ4in the 1869 Salon. François Bonvin?s Salon review in Le Figaro demands a cross of the Legion of Honor for Daumier; he is offered the cross the following year, but quietly refuses.

1871 On February 6, during the second stage of the siege of Paris by the Germans, is appointed to a commission to look after art in the museums of Paris. On April 17, during the Commune, serves on its art committee.
Continues to act as witness to his times with powerful lithographs, perhaps culminating in the February La France Prométhée et l?Aigle Vautour.

1872 Produces his only poster, The Charcoal Man of lvry and sole etching. The latter was created at a May 29 dinner party at the home of Charles de Bériot, on a copper plate, with Felicien Rops, Alfred Taiée, and Henri Harpignies (this etching is reprinted as the frontispiece to Champfleury?s
1878 Catalogue de l?oeuvre lithographiéet gravé de H. Daumier).
On September 14, in his last lithograph published in Le Charivari, a skeletal figure lies in a coffin draped with a shroud labeled àMonarchieé3ƒ4Et pendant ce tempslà ils continuent à affirmer qu?elle ne àest jamais mieux portée. (àMonarchy" – they still say it has never been in a better shape)

1874 On February 8 purchases the house he has leased for nine years at Valmondois.

1878 On April 17, mainly due to the efforts of Geoffroy-Dechaume, a large one-man exhibition opens at Galerie Durand-Ruel, with a catalogue that includes a biography of Daumier by Champfleury. The artist, recovering from an unsuccessful eye operation, does not attend.

February 10 , 1879 Daumier dies at Valmondois. He is buried on February 14 at the Valmondois cemetery, and later reinterred near Corot and Millet at Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Established by Jenny Squires Wilker