Question 1

True or false: Daumier’s famous painting 'The Third-Class Carriage' was commissioned by the French government.

Accepted Answer

False. It was never a commission. Daumier painted it as a personal social commentary on class disparities in 19th-century France.

Question 2

True or false: Daumier was once imprisoned for a political cartoon mocking King Louis-Philippe.

Accepted Answer

True. In 1832, he was sentenced to six months in prison for his lithograph 'Gargantua,' which depicted the king as a giant devouring the wealth of the people.

Question 3

True or false: Daumier was a close friend of Vincent van Gogh and gave him painting lessons.

Accepted Answer

False. Daumier died in 1879, when van Gogh was only 26 and just beginning his art career. They never met.

Question 4

True or false: Daumier was primarily a sculptor who only turned to lithography late in life.

Accepted Answer

False. He started as a lithographer in his youth and only later also sculpted. Lithography was his main medium from the 1830s onward.

Question 5

True or false: Honoré Daumier was nearly blind by the end of his life.

Accepted Answer

True. He suffered from severe cataracts in his later years, leaving him nearly blind.

Question 6

True or false: Daumier’s caricature of the French legal system in 'Les Gens de Justice' made him a hero to lawyers.

Accepted Answer

False. The series harshly mocked lawyers as corrupt and pompous, so he was actually despised by many in the legal profession.

Question 7

True or false: Daumier created over 4,000 lithographs during his career, many for French newspapers.

Accepted Answer

True. He was incredibly prolific, producing around 4,000 lithographs plus hundreds of paintings and sculptures, mostly for 'La Caricature' and 'Le Charivari.'

Question 8

True or false: Honoré Daumier created a series of paintings based on the literary character Don Quixote.

Accepted Answer

True. Daumier produced several oil paintings of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, often highlighting the knight's idealism against a barren landscape, now held in major museums.

Honoré Daumier Trivia Questions