*Impressions de Ménage*

Two people sleep side by side, propped on a bank of pillows: a bearded husband in his nightcap, his wife in a frilled one, mouths slightly open, the bedclothes worked up in soft crayon shadow. The scene is tender and faintly ridiculous at once, married life at its least glamorous hour. What you can also see is how it reached readers. The lithograph is printed on a sheet of Le Charivari, the paper's columns showing faintly around and beneath the image, one picture dropped into a river of daily type. That is the whole invention of the satirical weekly: a drawing as a regular feature, delivered on schedule with the news. Gavarni's household impressions turned ordinary domestic life into a running series, the everyday observed with a light, forgiving touch.