DAUMIER, Honoré

Tout ce Qu'on Voudra [As you like it]

Paris: Chez Aubert & cie., 1847. Item #06233

Honoré Daumier's 'As You Like It'

DAUMIER, Honoré. Tout ce Qu'on Voudra (As you like it). Paris: Chez Aubert & cie., [1847].

Folio ( 13 1/4 x 9 7/8 inches; 336 x 251 mm.). Nineteen fine lithograph plates of which seventeen are hand colored and heightened with gum arabic.

Publisher's dark blue diaper-grain cloth, covers ruled in blind, front cover decoratively lettered in gilt, smooth spine.

This remarkably rare album, containing the first nineteen plates of the series Tout ce Qu'on Voudra, essentially constitutes a publisher’s “sampler” or early issue collection, with the added distinction that seventeen are hand-colored and heightened with gum arabic—a luxury not typically afforded to ordinary subscribers. (Plate numbers 2 and 18 are uncolored). Near fine.

This series comprises a broad range of social types and caricatured scenes drawn from Parisian life. Rather than focusing on a single theme, like Daumier's earlier series on lawyers (Les Gens de Justice) or doctors (Médecins et Malades), Tout ce qu’on voudra is a free-ranging collection in the spirit of improvisation—satirizing bourgeois manners, social pretensions, urban spectacles, and eccentric characters. It is sometimes considered a late echo of his Types Parisiens and other physiologie-inspired work.

"Tout ce Qu'on Voudra. (As you like it). This series consists of 94 lithographs published between March 28,1847 and November 30, 1852 in the Charivari. Some of the plates carry no numbers. We are adding another 4 unpublished prints (DR 1717 to 1720) which might have belonged to this series. Similar to the series “Les bons bourgeois” the prints of the present series are dealing with numerous small misfortunes in the life of the Parisians. They were especially impressed by the possibilities opened by the railroad. Travels to the surroundings and the French province were both exciting and startling experiences. Apart from these drawings, this series also offers beautiful observations like the elderly couple remembering youth; memories and transience with a pensive humour, and never offending." (The Daumier Register).

According to the Daumier Register and OCLC/WorldCat, institutions typically only hold odd prints from this series, not publisher’s albums.

Daumier Register Nos. 1647-1665.

Price: $9,500.00