Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College

The Human Comedy: Chronicles of 19th-Century France

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Robert Macaire

ROBERT MACAIRE Together, Daumier and Philipon developed a series of prints of the emblematic type of Robert Macaire, the un-scrupulous speculator, promoter, and swindler whose greed and shady dealings came to represent the spirit of the July Monarchy. Macaire was a kind of visual incarnation of the famous catchphrase uttered by King Louis-Philippe’s minister Guizot. Since voting rights were tied to property ownership at the time, Guizot advised men who wanted the right to vote to simply Enrichissez-vous! (Get rich!). Karl Marx made a direct comparison between Louis-Philippe and Robert Macaire when he wrote: “The July Monarchy was no more than a joint stock company for the exploitation of French national wealth... Louis-Philippe was a director of this company, a Robert Macaire on the throne." For Baudelaire, "Macaire was the clear starting point of the caricature of manners... The political pamphlet gave way to comedy... And so caricature took on a new character, and was no longer particularly political. It became the general satire of the citizenry. It impinged on the domain of the novel."


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    Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879) Voulez-vous de l'or...? (Do you want gold...?), 1838 Lithograph General Acquisitions Fund, 1…