Ratapoil

• Ratapoil and Casmajou

  

  DAUMIER Honoré (1808 - 1879)

• This good Mr Ratapoil ...

  

  DAUMIER Honoré (1808 - 1879)

• Ratapoil. Bronze after the original.

  

  DAUMIER Honoré (1808 - 1879)

• Ratapoil. Bronze after the original.

  

  DAUMIER Honoré (1808 - 1879)

To close

Title: Ratapoil and Casmajou

Author : DAUMIER Honoré (1808 - 1879)

Creation date : 1850

Date shown: 1850

Dimensions: Height 24.7 - Width 21

Technique and other indications: Most active members of the Philanthropic Society of December 6: portraits drawn from nature and really striking.
Plate 6 from the News series, Le Charivari, October 11, 1850 Lithography

Storage place: National Library of France (Paris) website

Contact copyright: © Photo National Library of France

Picture reference: Pl. 6 s. News, Le Charivari, October 11, 1850

© Photo National Library of France

To close

Title: This good Mr Ratapoil ...

Author : DAUMIER Honoré (1808 - 1879)

Creation date : 1851

Date shown: 1851

Dimensions: Height 26.4 - Width 21.4

Technique and other indications: … Promised them that after they had signed his petition the larks would fall to them all roasted.
Plate 151 from the News series, Le Charivari, June 20, 1851.

Storage place: National Library of France (Paris) website

Contact copyright: © Photo National Library of France

Picture reference: Pl. 151 s. News, Le Charivari, June 20, 1851

© Photo National Library of France

To close

Title: Ratapoil. Bronze after the original.

Author : DAUMIER Honoré (1808 - 1879)

Creation date : 1891

Date shown: 1851

Dimensions: Height 43.5 - Width 15.7

Technique and other indications: melting; bronze; patina

Storage place: Orsay Museum website

Contact copyright: © Photo RMN-Grand Palais - H. Lewandowskisite web

Picture reference: 98CE17135 / RF 927

Ratapoil. Bronze after the original.

© Photo RMN-Grand Palais - H. Lewandowski

To close

Title: Ratapoil. Lewandowski

Publication date: March 2016

Historical context

It was in the tense political climate which preceded the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, following which Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte became President of the Republic (the Second Empire was not proclaimed until December 2, 1852), that Daumier had the brilliant intuition of “Colonel Ratapoil”, a sort of half-pay, propaganda agent, provocateur and spy in the service of the Bonapartist cause. The invention of this character is in fact linked to a whole campaign of anti-Bonapartist cartoons sparked in 1848 by Republicans, worried about the political rise and then the omnipresence in public life of the nephew of Emperor Napoleon I^er.

Image Analysis

The type of the character of Ratapoil appears clearly on September 28, 1850 in a lithograph by Charivari news, titled Protest by a member of the Society of December 10 : this society, first known as the “Napoleonic Committee”, had been created in 1849 by the Paris police chief to fight against the Republicans and to serve the Bonapartist coup d'etat. The hero receives his almost final appearance and the name which was to make his fame on October 11, 1850, in the first of the lithographs studied here, Ratapoil and Casmajou ... : exchanging a knowing glance, the two “décembrards” seem to pose as for an entry on scene. Ratapoil then reappears in some twenty plates inspired by political events, the publication of which lasts until the end of November 1851, that is to say on the eve of the coup d'état, and which therefore constitute so many warnings against Bonapartist maneuvers. In the plate of June 20, 1851, This good Mr Ratapoil promised them ..., our hero, who has just signed a petition to a couple of naïve peasants, slips into the background, a distinguished and reassuring figure. Twenty years later, Ratapoil would reappear in three lithographs dated October 24, November 11, 1871 and July 3, 1872: he then embodied the defeat of the Second Empire. As for the mud statuette that Daumier executed on the same subject, it did not serve him - unlike the busts of parliamentarians of 1831-1834 - as a model for his lithographs. In fact, it was not modeled until after the publication of the first plates, in March 1851.

Interpretation

Visiting Daumier on March 16, 1851, historian Jules Michelet saw this statuette being executed. Michelet, whose course at the Collège de France had been closed by order of the government on the previous 23 February, came to thank Daumier for the support he had given him by protesting against this act of hostility towards the Republicans through his lithograph Reverend Father Capucin Gorenflot taking charge of teaching a history course at the Collège de France to replace Mr. Michelet, published in The Charivari February 24. Echoing this visit in a story where it is obviously necessary to try to separate the truth from what is pure staging, Arsène Alexandre, the first biographer of Daumier, reports this perhaps apocryphal statement of Michelet, but which enlightens us sufficiently on the artist's intentions: “Ah! you have hit the enemy right in! This is the Bonapartist idea forever pillared by you! "This statuette, as remarkable for its plastic boldness as for its power of expression," is, indeed comments Alexander, the synthesis of the underdog agent, the tireless auxiliary of Napoleonic propaganda, provocative "Decembraillard" and stunner. To put it bluntly, it's Ratapoil ! "The character of Ratapoil, who no longer appears under the Empire, anticipates and therefore sums up the image that the new imperial regime will take on in the eyes of the Republicans: propaganda, cynicism, affairism, lack of scope (" Napoleon the small ”) Compared to the First Empire, etc.

• bonapartism
• caricature
• Second Republic
• Napoleon iii
• portrait
• France secondary school
• Rebellion

Bibliography

Daumier 1808-1879 , catalog of the exhibition at the Grand Palais, 1999-2000.

To cite this article

Robert FOHR, "Ratapoil"