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Slide  Actualities  Daumier

By 1870 over 3,500 lithographs stretched behind Daumier. Between 1828 & 1873 he contributed an average of 2 lithographs a week to one publication or another. You can see how greatly his technic has changed. The rather fully developed work of the early prints gave way to a bolder use of black & white which in turn gave way to a greater dependency on expressive line alone. There is only enough tone in this print of a brutally ridiculous & tragic conscription for the Franco-Prussian War to suggest form

Once more Daumier was making a social commentary, one with greater political force; & the series called Actualities, from which this is taken, is one of his last great statements. The fluid & absolutely certain line carries the drama of the subject as the silvery tone suggests the compassion Daumier felt for it. In this phase of Daumier's work we find what is perhaps the finest statement of power & delicacy that we know.

The eventfulness in Daumier's life was within him. About 1873 he retired to the cottage at Valmondois that his indefinitely more successful friend Corot had given him. There to live on a small government pension. He died blind in 1879.