History and reality in the work of O. Daumier

An outstanding master of lithography (a type of graphics, the printing form for which is the surface of a stone), the French artist Honore Daumier (1808-1879), being a man who hates all kinds of oppression and violence, always responded to the burning issues of his time, giving them his own assessment. The famous lithograph “Street Transnonen” (1834) was perceived by contemporaries as a protest against the terror and bloodshed that followed the July Revolution.

The historical basis of this work was the events of April 1834, associated with the dispersal of a political demonstration by government troops. From house no. 12 on Transnonen Street, they fired at the soldiers who were dispersing the demonstration from a window covered with blinds. In response, the soldiers broke into the house and killed all the residents.

This is how the author of one of the best books about the artist M. Yu. German described this work:

“Dim rays of daylight fall into a small, semi-dark room. They dispassionately illuminate the picture of a monstrous defeat. Sheets hang from the torn-up bed to the floor. The gnarled armrest lifted up to the sky and an old chair toppled to the side. In the cold light of the coming day, the figure of a man who has fallen on his back is visible. There are stains of dried blood on the nightgown … The man is dead. His face retained an expression of anguish and anger. He fell right on the body of his child, mixing his own blood with his.

How terrible the last minutes of this man’s life must have been, when in the dark, without even seeing his enemies, he fought with his bare hands with soldiers whose bayonets were already in the blood of his relatives! The head of a dead old man is visible on the floor nearby. His face was stiff and pointed, his sparse gray hair strewn across the floor. In the back of the room is a corpse of a woman, barely discernible in the twilight. Time stopped. Everything is quiet and motionless. Dark, ominous stains dry on the floor.

But Daumier did not want to portray martyrs. The man who fell to the floor by his bed was a fighter. Even if he died not on the barricades and not with weapons in his hands, he fought with all his might, until his last breath. And therefore, even painting him dead, in one shirt and a nightcap, Daumier did not make him miserable. On the contrary, this ridiculous night outfit emphasized the muscular body, the sweep of the shoulders. It was the fighter that Honoré placed in the center of the drawing and it was at him that he directed the rays of light. Let this image, where the cold immobility of death and the frozen movement of the struggle have merged, become the main thing in the drawing. Daumier wanted the lithography to generate not pity, but anger. “

This is how it was perceived by contemporaries:

“This is not a caricature, not a cartoon, this is a bloody page in modern history, a page created by a living hand and dictated by noble indignation. Daumier in this drawing has reached an unprecedented height. He made a picture, which, being only a black and white drawing on a sheet of paper, did not become from this either less significant or less durable. The Transnonen street massacre will remain an indelible stain on its perpetrators.