Honore Daumier
(b Marseille, 26 Feb 1808; d Valmondois, 10 Feb 1879).
French graphic artist, painter and sculptor.
Son of a Marseille glazier, frame-maker and occasional picture restorer, Daumier joined his father in Paris in 1816. He became a bailiff’s errand boy and was then employed by a bookseller, but his real enthusiasm was reserved for drawing and politics. He studied drawing with Alexandre Lenoir and at the Académie Suisse and then worked as assistant to the lithographer Béliard. Having mastered the techniques of lithography, he published his first plate in the satirical weekly La Silhouette in 1829.