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Honorè Daumier (Marseille 1808 - Valmondois 1879) <lang xml:lang="fr-FR">En Valachie</lang>, 1854 Lithograph mm 260 x 222 Donation of Guglielmo Guidi (February 2002) Gifted with a very fertile vein of inventiveness, Daumier produced around 4,000 lithographs, in addition to some woodcuts, in which the entire society of his time is reflected: from domestic life to that of the street, from the working class to the bourgeois, from the world of finance to that of the theatre, of justice. The artist lays bare the aspects of this society, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes squalid, sometimes comical, sometimes dramatic, with the immediacy and evidence of his rapid and confident drawing, of his energetic <lang xml:lang="it-IT">chiaroscuro</lang>. His caricatures and the characters he represents become emblematic figures of a declared human and social condition. <lang xml:lang="fr-FR">En Valachie. Generals Russes Venant de Faire Leur Dévotions dans Chapelles Catholique</lang>, published on July 1, 1854 in the magazine “<lang xml:lang="it-IT">Le Charivari</lang>”, tells of the Russian occupation of the Romanian region of Wallachia, which took place in 1853-54. It is a work with a more than explanatory title: two Russian generals flee, carrying with difficulty everything they have been able to loot to the small Catholic church that can be glimpsed in the background. Daumier, expressing himself with his unmistakably personal language, with that “roughly summary, authentic folk epic” style, tells us about the tragedy of war, laying bare the madness, greed, violence and stupidity inherent in it and in those who pursue it. Three states of this lithograph are known: the second differs from the first by the addition of the number 653, at the bottom, near the margin; the third state has the writing <lang xml:lang="fr-FR">CHARGEON LES RUSSE</lang> in place of <lang xml:lang="fr-FR">ACTUALITES</lang>.