Henri de Larochejacquelein

Honoré Daumier's lithograph—stone-drawn, with the velvety tonal range that separates lithography from the harder bite of etching—shows a caricatured figure in elaborate North African or 'Oriental' costume: robes, sash, rifles tucked into a belt, and a long staff or lance. The head is grotesquely enlarged in the caricaturist's convention, the face upturned with theatrical self-importance. Text beneath identifies the subject as Larochejacquelein dressed as 'Abd-el-Kader' when he appeared at the National Assembly to deposit his presidential ballot—the costume reading as political absurdity. Daumier worked in the direct lineage of Gillray and Rowlandson, and his serial political prints for Le Charivari are among the clearest ancestors of the sequential comic page.