Burden - Honore Daumier

Painting Detail

Burden
Artist: Honore Daumier
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 130x98 cm
Date: Between 1850 and 1853
Genre: Genre Painting
Source: Formerly in the collection of Otto Gerstenberg, later belonged to his daughter, Margarete Scharf, Berlin

Honoré Daumier's paintings differ from his printed works not only in their medium but also in their subject matter. Here, the irony of his graphic work is absent and he is a Romantic, in sympathy with his subject. In The Burden which might also well be called "The Gust of Wind", a woman strains against the elements. The picture is executed with a truly Romantic tension, in which are equally subordinate both this woman, who sees nothing of joy in her life, and the landscape, where the severe outline of the houses reiterates the desperate movements of the figure.

The main thing for the artist is the drama of life, which he reveals not so much through the subject as through the movement of the painting's masses and the contrasts of light and shadow.