A Model Marriage: For Thirty Years They Have Cultivated Virtue and Carnations, plate six from Les Bons Bourgeois 1846

Curator: Honoré Daumier's "A Model Marriage: For Thirty Years They Have Cultivated Virtue and Carnations," a lithograph created in 1846, provides a satirical glimpse into bourgeois life in 19th-century France. Editor: My first impression is…domestic dread. It's a cramped composition, these pinched faces peering out, and yet it feels like Daumier is making a point. There's something almost gothic in its caricature, especially with those grotesque faces peering out from the window box. Curator: Precisely! Daumier often used his art to critique the values and pretensions of the middle class. He highlights their adherence to societal norms and surface-level virtue while hinting at a deeper, perhaps less idyllic, reality. Editor: And that virtue is equated to carnations, which is hilarious and pointed. It reads like a commentary on the cultivation of appearances, not genuine emotion or even affection. This couple seems less about love and more about societal performance. Curator: You're absolutely right. The title itself, “Les Bons Bourgeois”, is laced with irony. Daumier regularly lampooned the bourgeoisie’s aspirations for social status. Editor: I wonder, looking at the date it was made, what anxieties Daumier may have been expressing about the family unit during this specific moment in France. Considering shifting class dynamics. Is he playing on common assumptions about domestic happiness? Or rather lack thereof. Curator: Daumier's lithographs found their public role through publications, enabling him to widely disseminate his sociopolitical critique through mass media to French audiences. Editor: I think there is a deeper discussion about how power, in 19th century France, gets distributed across the lines of gender, class, and social status. Curator: Daumier definitely invites us to contemplate how socio-economic power imbalances shaped and reflected marital relations in that period. Editor: It's striking how relevant this satire remains. The pressure to perform happiness, cultivate an image, to cultivate “virtue and carnations”, echoes in our own social media-saturated era. Curator: Daumier's print offers a powerful, satirical lens through which we can examine how institutions shape individual expression. Editor: It truly holds a mirror to a societal obsession with appearances, pushing us to challenge those norms in our own lives.