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Prints and Drawings
Artist: Honoré Daumier, French, 1808–1879
Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834, published in La Association Mensuelle”, no. 24, August-September 1834
1834
Lithograph
sheet: 33.9 × 46.5 cm (13 3/8 × 18 5/16 in.)
image: 28.6 × 44.2 cm (11 1/4 × 17 3/8 in.)
image: 28.6 × 44.2 cm (11 1/4 × 17 3/8 in.)
Everett V. Meeks, B.A. 1901, Fund
1982.120.4
A sharp satirist, Honoré Daumier created numerous caricatures of social and political events during his lifetime, most of them comical. Here, however, the artist adopts a somber tone, depicting the massacre of an innocent family by government troops during the April 1834 insurrections. Militia opened fire on a building that they believed harbored rebels, in the process accidentally killing civilians in their homes. The nightshirt worn by the dead man at center underscores his vulnerability. Of this image, Charles Baudelaire wrote, “Only silence and death reign.”
Status:
Culture:
French
Period:
19th century
Classification:
Works on Paper - Prints
Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.