Le jour n'est pas plus pur

A lithograph — Daumier's chosen weapon — shows two theatrical figures in close, conspiratorial profile: a dark-bearded man in a red vest and a helmeted warrior bearing a quiver of arrows. Both faces are drawn with the exaggerated hooked noses and jutting chins that characterized stock comic-villain physiognomy in 19th-century French caricature, a visual shorthand carrying unmistakable ethnic prejudice common to the period's stage tradition and popular print culture. The French caption — Le jour n'est pas plus pur ('The day is no purer') — quotes Racine's Phèdre, suggesting theatrical or political irony. Daumier, working for Le Charivari, perfected the lithographic caricature tradition linking Gillray and Rowlandson to the sequential panel humor that would become the comic strip.