
“The Burden (The Laundress)”, circa 1850-53
Born 200 years ago this year, Honoré Daumier endowed caricature with art and art with humanity. But where was he 166 years ago today, August 27? He was starting a jail term for being a wise guy.
Too much of the sweet life only leaves you with wisdomless molars in agony, and where is Daumier when you need him? “Have a toothache? See Daumier!” Van Gogh wrote to Theo. He’d seen a Daumier drawing called “The Excursion Train” and forgot all about his rotting bite.
You would think Honoré Daumier would be everywhere in this bicentennial of his birthday. There have indeed been a string of exhibitions in Germany, and according to Wikipedia, Asia and Australia dusted him off for his 200th, but for the most part it seems that the French keep him pretty much to themselves, amid couched allusions to his whereabouts.

Where is this “Villa Daumier” where he died early in 1879, blind and destitute and dependent upon the kindness of better-off painters? Was the little house that Corot bought for him in Valmondois or Auvers? Online sources can’t seem to agree, though surely the website of Valmondois itself, from which this photo came, can be trusted when it says it’s there … but where? It offers no address, just a “Come and see the latest of the exhibitions by other artists that we put on at the villa.”
It’s on Chemin Bescherelle, another source says, but try finding the great lexicographer’s name anywhere in the vicinity. Instead, others insist, it’s right on the main drag, and since a Place Honoré Daumier adjoins it, the house must be there, right? Here’s Google Earth’s view of the neighbourhood.

That’s presumably the town square just beyond Place Honoré Daumier in this shot, where there’s a bust of Daumier by Adolphe-Victor Geoffroy-Dechaume.
Valmondois says online it installed the sculpture in 1909, the centenary of Honoré’s birth in far-off Marseilles.

When Daumier died his body was carted over the the town cemetery, but it didn’t stay there long, as we shall see in a moment.
Not far from Place Honoré Daumier are Allée Maurice de Vlaminck and Rue Dorée. Vlaminck certainly spent time in Valmondois, well after Daumier’s day, but I’m not sure about Gustave Dorée. France has a tendency to honour its artists this way in any old town, no matter where they hung out. Charles-François Daubigny is said to have been a resident of Valmondois, but his famously decorated house is in Auvers, adding to the muddle.
Where is the house of Théodore Rousseau in Barbizon, where Daumier spent his summer vacation in 1865? Barbizon has a Rue Théodore Rousseau — you can see it shouldering off from the main street in the image below. Interestingly, that road is crossed by little Allée John Constable, just in case the English forgot to pay tribute to their landscape maestro.

Daumier’s final and forever address is easier to find. He’s here amid Death’s busy clutter in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, his friend Corot within eternal reach. Daumier’s admirers decided a year or so after he died that he deserved to be among the greats in Paris’ best-known graveyard, so they disengaged him from Valmondois’ clutch.
See the rest.