Don Quixote, Honore Daumier – description of the painting

Description of the picture:

Don Quixote – Honore Daumier. 1870. Oil on canvas. 51 x 33 cm
Honore Daumier entered the history of fine art as a master-graphic artist, an outstanding cartoonist. Meanwhile, painting always lured this extraordinary person, but because of the heavy workload in the magazine, he was far from always able to follow his desires. Now, art historians are united – Daumier’s contribution to painting is also very significant, because with paints and canvas he felt as free as creating his lithographs. Some even show the worldview that specifically Daumier was actually the first impressionist.

The most famous of the creations of masters in colorful technology is a series of works dedicated to Don Quixote.

The image of Don Quixote, as a funny and weak person on a physical level, who very keenly feels the injustice of the world around us and demonstrates the strength of spirit over the strength of the body, is transmitted in a very original way by Domier. The author refused exact lines and a realistic image – the hero does not have a face, instead of clothes generalized strokes, the texture of the environment is hardly guessed. Daumier demonstrates artistic grotesque to accurately convey the emotional component of the image. The master seems to want to say: the figure of a person is absolutely not important here – he seeks to convey the figurative, semantic essence of Don Quixote.

But the most amazing thing is that through this generalization, the author was quite realistically and emotionally able to convey the world-famous literary character. Against the backdrop of the Spanish landscape, a nag moves, vaguely reminiscent of a horse, but on top is a real knight with a proud posture and a thin spear aimed at the sky. This, without a doubt, is Don Quixote, although faceless, but to become who “breathes” nobility and generosity.

Honore Daumier, a master-graphic artist who very subtly felt and experienced injustice and cruelty, did not need an accurate drawing, because we ourselves can see the visible – the master reveals to us the invisible and this is the main value of his special interpretation of Don Quixote."