Education on the bottle or the charms of fatherhood. "he was then very bad..." c. 19th century

Curator: This lithograph by Honoré Daumier is titled "Education on the bottle or the charms of fatherhood. 'he was then very bad...'". Editor: It's quite intimate, almost a domestic comedy captured in stark lines. Curator: Daumier often used lithography to comment on bourgeois society. Here, we see the labor of parenting, a stark contrast to idealized family portraits. Note the father with his drink. Editor: And the mother, almost aggressively holding the child, her face strained. It challenges the sentimental portrayal of motherhood prevalent at the time. Curator: Exactly. Daumier is using the materials and accessible printmaking process to circulate social critiques broadly. It would have been widely distributed. Editor: It gives you a sense of the real, often unglamorous, aspects of family life, a far cry from the artistic norms of the day. Curator: A commentary on fatherhood, parenthood, and the labor involved, brought to life through Daumier's mastery of the lithographic process. Editor: This look into Daumier's critical gaze on 19th-century domesticity is quite compelling.