Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834, published in La Association Mensuelle”, no. 24, August-September 1834

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.”