Le Troubadour (1868-1873)

Daumier, Honoré (1808-1879)

Le Troubadour (The Troubadour)
18681873
Oil on fabric, 83.6 x 56.8 cm
Cleveland Museum of ArtCleveland

Daumier was called the “Michelangelo of caricature” and especially renowned for his cartoons and drawings satirizing 19th-century French politics and society. 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. (CMA)