Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College

The Human Comedy: Chronicles of 19th-Century France

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Tout est perdu ! Fors la caisse...

Tout est perdu ! Fors la caisse...

Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879) Tout est perdu ! Fors la caisse.... (All is lost! Except the cashbox...), 1848 Lithograph Gift of Eugene L. Garbaty, 1954.121

Louis-Philippe fled Paris during the Revolution and went into exile in England, where he lived the rest of his life. This caption, in which the deposed king clings to the one thing he and his supporters hold dear—money—puts a shamefully mercantile twist on the well-known exclamation of King François I (1497-1547): “All is lost, save honor!”

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