The Troubadour (1868–73): Art, History and Details

The Troubadour (1868–73) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The troubadour, a medieval traveling poet and entertainer, was a popular subject in 19th-century French art. Associated with chivalry and courtly love, the theme reflects a broader, romantic fascination with France's medieval past. Although Daumier was particularly inspired by the troubadour paintings of French Rococo artist Jean-Antoine Watteau of the 1700s, he rendered the subject here in a powerful style of simplified, muscular form that appealed to modern artists of his own time.

Object facts

• Title: The Troubadour
• Date: 1868–73
• Creator attribution: Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 99.5 x 73 x 8 cm (39 3/16 x 28 3/4 x 3 1/8 in.); Unframed: 83.6 x 56.8 cm (32 15/16 x 22 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1958.23

A detail from the museum

Daumier was called the “Michelangelo of caricature” and especially renowned for his cartoons and drawings satirizing 19th-century French politics and society.

Collection credit

Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Galerie Georges Petit. Tableaux modernes. May 4-5, 1899.
• “The Daumier Register,” DR number 7186 “Le Troubadour,” http://www.daumier-register.org/werkview.php?key=7186, accessed 12/10/15.
• Maison, K. E. Honoré Daumier; Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Watercolours, and Drawings. [Greenwich, Conn.]: New York Graphic Society, 1968.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.