Painting Molière as an act of rebellion: Honoré Daumier, censored speech, and revivals of theatrical satire

Best known as a caricaturist who skewered the politicians and social mores of nineteenth-century France, Honoré Daumier also had deep abiding engagement with seventeenth-century playwright Molière. This article examines Daumier’s paintings Molière’s plays Le Malade imaginaire (1673) Les Fourberies de Scapin (1671), initiated shortly after was fired from thirty-year position working for illustrated press. Rather than understanding these in relationship to his broader political project, scholars tend interpret them isolation lithographs, inadequate justification that formality stage diverges humor cartoons. Daumier—who, like Molière, negotiated shifting censorship restrictions throughout career—painted when they were being revived by theaters because new material heavily censored. In moments intense repression, audiences playhouses used oblique attacks on government. legal frameworks linking caricatural style painting theatrical performance argues that, turning Molière subject paint explicitly censored print, works intervene contested space speech Second Empire France.