"Voyons! Mme Majeste..."
1853
Medium
lithograph on chine collé
Dimensions
overall: 37.6 x 32 cm (14 13/16 x 12 5/8 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Frank Anderson Trapp
Accession Number
2002.57.24
Art Historical Context
Paul Gavarni's *Voyons! Mme Majeste... (1853) is a lively lithograph on chine collé, capturing the witty social satire for which the French artist was renowned. Gavarni, a master caricaturist active in mid-19th-century Paris the Second Empire, specialized in lithographs that poked fun at bourgeois pretensions, fashion, and theater life. His works, often published in journals like *Le Charivari*, blended sharp observation with fluid lines, making him a key figure in the Romantic-era printmaking revival. This print exemplifies lithography's versatility—a chemical process allowing artists to dra...
About the Artist
Paul Gavarni
Paul Gavarni, born Sulpice Guillaume Chevalier on January 13, 1804, in Paris to a cooper father from Burgundy and mother Marie-Monique Thiémet—whose brother, painter Guillaume Thiémet, served as his godfather—began his career far from the art world. As a youth, he worked in a machine factory and studied mechanical drawing at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in 1818, followed by evening classe...