Caricature of *Le Constitutionnel*

A monstrously fat dowager fills a theater box, swaddled in ruffles, a wreath of roses perched on her wig, a fan drooping from one gloved hand as she peers down her nose at the stage. The mock-genealogical caption crowns her with an absurd string of names ending in "de Constitutionnel." She is not a person but a newspaper: Le Constitutionnel, the smug, complacent voice of the propertied middle class, rendered by Daumier as bloated self-satisfaction in the flesh. Turning an institution into a single grotesque body is caricature's oldest and sharpest move, and it is precisely how a comic assigns a recurring character to an idea. Drawn on stone for La Caricature in 1834, the plate shows Daumier's modelling at full strength, the flesh built up in greasy crayon until it nearly sweats.