"Daumier's.. drawing is fluent and easy; it is a continuous improvisation. He has a wonderful, almost super-human memory, from which he works as from a model. His powers of observation are such that in his work we never find a single head that is out of character with the figure beneath it.. .The artist manifests here a marvelous cunning in portraiture: while caricaturing and exaggerating the features of his originals, he yet adheres so faithfully to nature that these productions might serve as models to all portraitists. Here in these animalised faces may be seen and read clearly all the meanness-es of soul, all the absurdities, all the aberrations of intelligence, all the vices of the heart; yet at the same time all is broadly drawn and accentuated. Daumier combined the suppleness of the art with the exactness of a Lavater."
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Quote of Charles Baudelaire, in Curiosites Esthetiques, 1868; as cited in 'Daumier', 'The Studio special Autumn' number, 1904, by Henri Frantz (transl. Miss Helen Chisholm). ed. Charles Holme; Offices of the Studio, London, Paris, New York, MCMIV, p. DVii
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Honoré Daumier
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