The Witnesses - The War Council

Art Historical Context

In the years after France’s crushing defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Honoré Daumier used his weekly lithographs to register the continuing presence of the dead in public life. The figures here are not generic ghosts but the returned witnesses to decisions made behind closed doors; they stream toward the arched entrance of the Conseil de Guerre, the military tribunal that would judge the conduct of the war and the Commune that followed it. The drawing sets their frantic, forward-leaning motion against the blank rectangle of the open doorway, so that the eye travels with them from shadow into the unshown interior. Their ragged drapery and protruding bones create a single, tumbling diagonal that never resolves into orderly procession, suggesting that the living institutions they approach remain untouched by the disorder they embody. Printed in 1872 on tan wove paper, the sheet is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Look at the smallest skeleton’s hand gripping the shin of the figure ahead: the clutch is both desperate and oddly intimate, registering how the weakest are carried along by the momentum of those already lost.

About the Artist

Honoré Daumier · 1810–1879

Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808-1879) was a prolific French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor whose works offered incisive commentary on the social and political life of 19th-century France. Known as the 'Michelangelo of Caricature,' Daumier produced over 4,000 lithographs, 500 paintings, 1,000 drawings, and 100 sculptures during his lifetime. His biting political satire led to his imp...