Hola, hé! Madame l'hotesse c. 19th century

Honoré Daumier made this lithograph, Hola, hé! Madame l'hotesse, in nineteenth-century France. It depicts a bourgeois diner reacting with disgust at a hair he has found in his soup. Daumier was a master of social satire, and here he uses caricature to poke fun at the pretensions and perceived excesses of the middle class. The man's exaggerated features, from his bulging eyes to his pointed nose, suggest his outrage is somewhat performative, and more generally, that the customer is always right, even when being unreasonable. Daumier often published his lithographs in newspapers like Le Charivari, which was a popular forum for social and political commentary. These images offered a critical look at French society and played a crucial role in shaping public opinion during a time of rapid social and political change. To fully understand Daumier’s art, one should look to the prints themselves, but also consider how the rise of the illustrated press allowed artists to reach a broader audience and to intervene more directly in the social and political life of their time.