Le Ventre législatif (The Legislative Belly)

Realism in France

Honoré Daumier

Le Ventre législatif (The Legislative Belly)

1834

Lithograph, image 28.2 × 43.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The government ministers and deputies of 1834, sitting in tiers, each drawn as a recognizable caricature.

  • Daumier had modeled many of these politicians as small painted clay busts, which curator John Daniel Tilford of the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art describes as models for his lithographs.
  • The French title puns on the legislative body: ventre means belly.
  • Satire in the press made current politics a subject for art.
Lithograph
a print drawn in greasy crayon on stone, so it could be printed quickly in large editions for the illustrated press and print series.

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Public Domain (Met Open Access)

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