Sale 219 Lot 434

A PLANTER WITH A WHIP AND AN EXHAUSTED ENSLAVED CANE WORKER, A DAUMIER SATIRE OF THE SUGAR BEET AND SLAVE LABOR circa 1840s Honore Daumier (French, 1808-1879), lithograph on wove paper, plate no. 3 from the series "Actualites," published in the Parisian satirical journal "Le Charivari," depicting a lean planter in a straw hat and striped clothing raising a long whip over a heavyset enslaved man slumped against a field of sugar cane, with a plantation house and palms in the background. The caption, rendered in a mock Creole dialect, has the exhausted worker plead that he can no longer labor in the cane while the French eat beet sugar, a pointed comment on the metropolitan beet sugar industry's competition with colonial cane sugar and on the violence on which slave-grown sugar depended during the debates over abolition. The image also reflects the racial caricature and condescending parody of Creole speech common to period French satire. Monogrammed "h.D." in the stone at lower left, inscribed "Actualites" at top and "No. 3" at upper right, "Imp. d'Aubert & Cie" at lower left and "Chez Bauger R. du Croissant 16" at lower right, with a pencil collector's notation at the lower margin. Unframed. sheet: 13.5 9.75 inches
$80-120