Artwork
Nouveau parapluie, par Brevet...
Nouveau parapluie, par Brevet... is an ink print by the Romanticist artist Honoré Daumier. It dates from 1840 and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
About this work
Overview
The composition focuses on a solitary figure clutching the device, his expression tense and his features partially obscured by shadow, suggesting unease.
Created in 1840, this lithograph by Honoré Daumier captures a fleeting urban moment centered on a newly patented umbrella. The composition focuses on a solitary figure clutching the device, his expression tense and his features partially obscured by shadow, suggesting unease. The work exemplifies Daumier’s habit of turning everyday scenes into visual commentary, employing a modest scale that invites close inspection of the subject’s demeanor and the object’s precarious form.
Subject & Meaning
The central figure, a man in a dark coat, holds an umbrella whose frame appears oddly bent, as if on the verge of collapse. This visual tension may allude to the fragility of newly marketed inventions and the anxieties they provoked among consumers. By highlighting the umbrella’s patent status, Daumier hints at the burgeoning culture of commercial innovation and the bureaucratic processes that accompanied it, using humor to critique the era’s consumerist impulses.
Technique & Style
Daumier produced the image using the lithographic process: a greasy ink was drawn directly onto a stone surface, then chemically treated so that ink adhered only to the drawn areas. Paper pressed onto the stone transferred the design, yielding prints that retain the spontaneity of a hand‑drawn sketch while allowing multiple copies. The work’s stark chiaroscuro, exaggerated line work, and slightly distorted perspective are characteristic of Daumier’s satirical visual language.
History & Provenance
The print emerged during Daumier’s prolific period as a caricaturist for the Parisian journals *La Caricature* and *Le Charivari*, where he regularly targeted political and social subjects. Though originally circulated as a newspaper illustration, the lithograph later entered private collections and museum holdings, reflecting its continued relevance as a document of mid‑nineteenth‑century French visual culture.
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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