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for -O mon Victor idolâtré...il me vient une idée poétique!! Précipitons nous ensemble et à l’instant du haut de cette grise falaise dans les flots bleus de l’Océan!... –Nous noyer dans la mer!... nous y réfléchirons, Anastasie, ... je tiens à descendre encore pendant quelque temps le fleuve de la vie! from Les Bas Bleus
-O mon Victor idolâtré...il me vient une idée poétique!! Précipitons nous ensemble et à l’instant du haut de cette grise falaise dans les flots bleus de l’Océan!... –Nous noyer dans la mer!... nous y réfléchirons, Anastasie, ... je tiens à descendre encore pendant quelque temps le fleuve de la vie! from Les Bas Bleus
Creator
Honoré Daumier
(French, 1808 - 1879)
Date1844
Mediumlithograph on paper
DimensionsImage: 22.4 x 18.9 cm (8 13/16 x 7 7/16 in.)
Overall: 31.2 x 21.9 cm (12 5/16 x 8 5/8 in.)
Overall: 31.2 x 21.9 cm (12 5/16 x 8 5/8 in.)
Credit LineGift of Robert Hunter, 1936
Category
- Prints
Object number2401
ProvenanceThis work is one of forty Les Bas Bleus prints Daumier created in 1844. Les Bas Bleus is one of Daumier’s most controversial yet successful series; the set of forty prints was sold as a separate album on white paper in 1844. The bluestockings took their name from a group of young men in Britain who met to discuss literary and political matters in the late-eighteenth century. In France, the group was made up of activist women, such as Jeanne Desiree (1810-1891), George Sand (1804-1876), and Flora Tristan (1803-1844). Daumier and the members of Le Charivari openly ridiculed these women and the burgeoning feminist movement. “Bas bleus” women were blamed for neglecting their family duties in order to pursue their literary and socialist careers. In most of the prints in the series, the domestic world turned upside down (with sexual roles reversed) is the common theme. The setting in this particular print is at odds with the other images in this series, yet the female figure is scorned for having a poetic or romantic impulse at the edge of a cliff (i.e. to throw herself along with her husband into the ocean), an idea the male renounces since he belongs to the “fairer gender” and supposed to be “logical and not driven by his emotions”.
LocationNot currently on display
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French
April 1915-January 1916
Photograph
French
April 1915-January 1916
Photograph
French
April 1915-January 1916
Photograph