Prints and Authors in the Time of Manet

Transnonain Street, April 15, 1834 (Rue Transnonain, le 15 avril 1834)

Lithograph, 1834
Published in L’Association mensuelle, October 1834 and in Le Charivari, August 15, 1835
Gift of Albert Roullier Art Galleries, 1923.3103

In this powerful masterpiece of political art Daumier depicted the aftermath of government retaliation for a working-class riot protesting harsh working conditions. In an extension of the riot, a sniper killed a police officer. The police stormed the sniper’s building and killed a number of innocent residents, including a woman and child. Daumier creates a moving, galvanizing image showing a family—including an elderly man and an infant—gunned down in their night clothes. The print attracted the anger of the regime of King Louis-Philippe and was confiscated by the government, but not before it was published in two papers and widely circulated.