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"Tout ce qu'on Voudra"
Paris: Chez Aubert & Cie., 1850. Item #06382
“Anything You Like”: Daumier and the Freedom of Observation
Daumier’s Notebook of Parisian Life
DAUMIER, Honoré. Tout ce qu’on voudra. Paris: published in Le Charivari, 1847–1852.
Folio (14 3/8 × 10 1/8 inches; 365 × 257 mm - actual plate size). Album containing 73 (of 94) original lithographs, each retaining the original Le Charivari letterpress text on the verso, compiled from newspaper issues.
Handsomely bound ca. 1900 by Édouard Pagnant, in three-quarter red morocco over marbled boards, covers ruled in gilt, smooth spine decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers. With his binder’s ticket on the front pastedown: “Pagnant / Relieur de luxe / 30, rue Jacob / Paris (6e).” All plates tipped onto uniform sheets (15 × 11 inches; 381 × 280 mm) and mounted on stubs. Some light to moderate foxing and or browning to several plates.
A substantial surviving run from Daumier’s celebrated social-satirical series, issued intermittently in Le Charivari over a five-year period. The retention of the printed versos confirms the plates in their authentic periodical state, rather than later album or suite impressions.
The twenty-one missing plates are nos. 3, 5, 6, 10, 14, 16, 17, 19, 37, 38, 51, 52, 58, 59, 62, 72, 73, 74, 75, 93, and 94.
Very rare: we are unable to locate any other surviving run of Tout ce qu’on voudra of comparable extent in the original Le Charivari state.
Honoré Daumier’s Tout ce qu’on voudra is one of his most open-ended and deliberately unprogrammatic series. The title translates loosely as “Anything You Like,” “Whatever One Pleases,” or “All That One Might Want.” In other words: no single subject, no fixed agenda, no promise of coherence. The phrase would have been instantly understood by contemporary readers as a wry disclaimer - a signal that what follows is governed by observation rather than doctrine.
Issued intermittently in Le Charivari between 1847 and 1852, Tout ce qu’on voudra allowed Daumier maximum freedom. Unlike his explicitly political series, it ranges widely across Parisian life, social types, everyday humiliations, marital tensions, professional absurdities, street scenes, and private miseries, often without captions that moralize or explain. The humor is quieter, more psychological, and often darker: comedy arising not from topical satire but from the persistent awkwardness of being human.
The title itself is central to the series’ meaning. Tout ce qu’on voudra suggests both abundance and indifference: here is everything - and therefore nothing in particular. It mirrors Daumier’s artistic position in these years, turning away from overt polemic toward a broader, more enduring social vision. What binds the plates together is not subject but attitude - a skeptical, compassionate, and sharply observant eye trained on modern life.
Seen as a whole, the series reads less like a “set” than like a visual notebook, accumulating truths through repetition and variation. It is precisely this looseness - announced by the title - that makes Tout ce qu’on voudra one of Daumier’s most modern achievements: a portrait of society not as ideology, but as lived experience, offered without hierarchy, and without apology.
Edouard Pagnant set up on his own in 1876 (rue Saint-Dominique), and in 1881 he incorporated/added the house of Marmin. He later moved his workshop to 30 rue Jacob (Paris 6e), and he was still there until his death on 28 January 1916.
The complete series is recorded in the Daumier Register: DR 1647–1720; 2200–2217; 2320–2321.
Price: $5,500.00