Artwork
Appuyez fort, ça fait rentrer la bosse...
Appuyez fort, ça fait rentrer la bosse... is an ink print by the Romanticist artist Honoré Daumier. It dates from 1838 and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
About this work
Overview
Created in 1838, this lithograph on newsprint by Honoré Daumian captures a fleeting, chaotic scene in which two figures hover over a third, seated and despondent. The composition is rendered with rapid, sketch‑like lines, giving the work a spontaneous, almost scribbled quality that underscores its satirical tone.
Subject & Meaning
The central figure slumps in a chair, clutching his head, while his companions point and gesticulate as if offering a dubious remedy. The French caption, loosely translated as “Push hard, it makes the bump go in…,” mocks quack medical cures and, by extension, the broader social pretensions Daumian routinely lampooned.
Technique & Style
Executed as a lithograph on cheap newsprint, the print exploits the medium’s capacity for swift, reproducible images. Daumian’s loose, gestural line work and exaggerated caricature amplify the humor, while the rough texture of the paper reinforces the work’s immediacy and its function as a mass‑circulated commentary.
History & Provenance
The print emerged during Daumian’s prolific period of political satire for publications such as La Caricature and Le Charivari. Distributed widely in the turbulent years between the 1830 Revolution and the later Second Empire, the work circulated among a readership attuned to republican critique of monarchy, aristocracy, and clerical authority.
Artist & collection
Artist
Honoré-Victorin Daumier was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870.
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