Tribulation

This etching depicts a street scene during heavy rain, where a well-dressed figure sits uncomfortably in a sedan chair while two attendants struggle with umbrellas and a porter waits in a sentry box. The French caption reads "Caparol il pleut dans ma chaise / ouvrez donc une me changer" ("Captain, it's raining in my chair / open it, I need to change")—a comic lament on urban inconvenience.

The print belongs to the tradition of social satire that emerged from Hogarth and flourished through Gillray and Rowlandson, later refined by Daumier. These etchings and lithographs mocked everyday frustrations, class pretensions, and urban absurdities through exaggerated figure drawing and detailed observation. Such prints were mass-produced, affordable entertainment that evolved into the satirical broadsheets and eventually comic journalism that would influence modern cartooning.