![]() The second appearance of Macaire and Bertrand in Daumier's 'Caricaturana' seriesīorn in a house just off the Old Port of Marseille, Daumier was raised in the streets of Paris. ![]() It was Paris’ own human zoo that had first sharpened his eye and honed his critical powers and when the parliamentary assembly eventually outlawed criticism of its political and royal institutions, it was to this spectrum of human indecency that Daumier would return for inspiration for his archetypal ‘Robert Macaire’ series, through which he would smuggle his anti-establishment jibes. ![]() But the image of a captive Daumier observing the captured beasts across the street was also, in its own little way, prophetic. It was one of life’s ironic symmetries, and the kind of biographical detail of which writers dream. Robert Macaire and his sidekick Bertrand, plotting their latest industrial deception. Through the bars in his damp cell, Daumier could watch the animals opposite prowl about their cages. ![]() Sainte-Pélagie, the Paris gaolhouse to which insurrectionists and personae non gratae of the time were sent, was said to adjoin the local zoo. In the summer of 1832, Honoré Daumier was sent to prison for six months after offending the king and his officers in a particularly acute satirical cartoon. ![]()
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