A Man Reading in a Garden (recto); Preliminary sketch for a Man Reading in a Garden (verso)

Honoré Daumier

ca. 1865 · Watercolor over black chalk, with pen and ink, brush and wash, and lithographic crayon. Verso: pen and brown ink, black gray wash, and lithographic crayon · Drawings and Prints

After Daumier's death, this drawing came into the hands of the Paris art dealers Boussod & Valadon, where Vincent Van Gogh's brother, Theo, worked. Vincent seems to have recalled seeing it, writing to his brother on October 22, 1882: "I remember very well being most impressed by a drawing of Daumier's: an old man under the chestnut trees in the Champs Elysées. . . . What impressed me so much at the time was something so stout and manly in Daumier's conception, something that made me think it must be good to think and to feel like that and to overlook or ignore a multitude of things and to concentrate on what makes us sit up and think and what touches us as human beings more directly and personally than meadows or clouds."

Artist

Honoré Daumier

Date

ca. 1865

Medium

Watercolor over black chalk, with pen and ink, brush and wash, and lithographic crayon. Verso: pen and brown ink, black gray wash, and lithographic crayon

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929