Le ventre législatif: Aspect des bancs ministériels de la chambre improstituée de 1834

Honoré Daumier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Daumier, one of the nineteenth century's great caricaturists, was prolific as a pointed political satirist until complete censorship of such subjects was imposed by the government in 1835. In this lithograph, he ridiculed the conservative members of the Chamber of Deputies—all recognizable to his contemporaries—for their arrogance and corruption, depicting them as bloated and dozing. Daumier's publisher Charles Philipon covered the costs of the censor's fines against his politically charged periodicals by issuing such prints as part of the subscription series L'Association Mensuelle.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art