On flaire la marchandise... avant de la mécaniser!... 1839

Honoré Daumier created this lithograph sometime around 1859, focusing on the materials of the everyday. He uses lithographic crayon and ink on paper, common for printing and illustration at the time. Daumier renders a butcher and a woman, perhaps a customer or food vendor, examining goods. The hanging sausages and cuts of meat evoke the material reality of food production and consumption in 19th-century France. There is a striking contrast between the skilled craft of butchery and the emerging mechanization of food production. He emphasizes the physical labor involved in handling and preparing food, while hinting at anxieties about industrialization altering traditional practices. Daumier uses the immediacy of lithography to address social issues. He blurs the lines between fine art and the visual culture of mass media, prompting us to consider the politics of labor, class, and consumption.