- Vot' bourgeois est-y pour la liberté de la boucherie?...
Title (alt.):
- Your husband - is he for the freedom of the butchery trade?. Charivari
Description:
A butcher angrily asks a customer if her husband is for the freedom of the butchery trade. On February 24, 1858 a new law ended a monopoly from which some 500 meat stalls and butcheries in Paris had benefited for many years, giving way to free enterprise. Even the scales, manipulated by the butchers in a rather creative way, were suddenly standardized under a governmental system of control. This change, effecting everyday life, motivated Daumier to produce 11 lithographs (DR 3010-3021) as well as a number of drawings and paintings, covering the subject. According to Cherpin, the Musée Cantini in Marseille has a lithographic stone of this plate, the authenticity of which doesn't seem to be clear. Special prints were published from this stone stating "après Daumier" (after Daumier). Over a period of 8 years we were able to locate only about twenty stones of which the largest collection, 14 stones attributed to Daumier, were originally at the Musée Cantini in Marseille and were now supposed to be at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseille. Two of them were shown in a Daumier exhibition in 1947 together with an old lithographic press. To our knowledge, only two stones are presently in private collections, while the remaining four are spread in museums such as Boston, Bibliothèque Nationale, Hammer Collection etc. On December 20, 2007 we were informed by the curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseille that indeed the 14 stones mentioned by Cherpin in "Art et Provence" 1948 (pp 155/156) were not part of the Museum’s collection, nor did they belong to the Musée Cantini in Marseille. He believes that these stones were in 1947 most likely part of a private collection and they may have been lent on exhibition during the period described by Cherpin. We are presently trying to collect more information about the whereabouts of these 14 stones. Exhibited were the numbers DR 763, 2182, 2325, 2825, 3015, 3019, and 3235. Differences between the text visible on the stone and compared to the prints appeared on DR 2325 and DR 2825 (details in "Art et Provence".
Copyright restrictions may apply. For permission to copy or use this image, contact the Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections Department, Brandeis University Libraries. The following credit line must be included with each item used: Benjamin A. and Julia M. Trustman Collection of Honoré Daumier Lithographs, Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University.
Contact host institution for more information.
Place of origin:
Paris
Notes:
2nd state.
Published in: Le Charivari, November 28, 1857.
Notes (acquisition):
Donated by: Benjamin A. and Julia M. Trustman, 1959.
