The Troubadour
Medium
oil on fabric
Dimensions
unframed: 83.6 × 56.8 cm · framed: 99.5 × 73 × 8 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
Modern European Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
Accession Number
1958.23
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
About this artwork
The troubadour, a medieval traveling poet and entertainer, was a popular subject in 19th-century French art. Associated with chivalry and courtly love, the theme reflects a broader, romantic fascination with France's medieval past. Although Daumier was particularly inspired by the troubadour paintings of French Rococo artist Jean-Antoine Watteau of the 1700s, he rendered the subject here in a powerful style of simplified, muscular form that appealed to modern artists of his own time.