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Arrivée en Alsace du commissaire extraordinaire Coco Romieu from Actualités

Creator Honoré Daumier (French, 1808 - 1879)

Date1850

Mediumlithograph on paper

DimensionsImage: 21.5 x 26.8 cm (8 7/16 x 10 9/16 in.)
Overall (sheet): 24.5 x 29.4 cm (9 5/8 x 11 9/16 in.)

Credit LineGift of Robert Hunter, 1936

Category

Prints

Object number2399

ProvenanceAuguste Romieu (1800-1852) was a writer and the author of L’Ere des Cesars. Standing on a carriage as he arrives to Alsace, he holds up a copy of his L’Ere des Cesars indicating that a new era dawns upon the French. Romieu kept his distance from the Second Republic and was a supporter of Napoleon III and Bonapartism at large. In Daumier’s print, men in the background run away from Romieu’s carriage because they are being attacked by bees – the bee was a symbol that Napoleon III had inherited from Napoleon I as a replacement of the fleur de lis. Romieu is not frightened by the bee that rests on his nose, since he is the one to have brought the swarm of bees to Alsace along with him. It was Napoleon, as President of the French Republic, who sent Romieu on a mission to Alsace.

LocationNot currently on display

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