Laocoon1.0029_Daumier

Laocoon1.0029_Daumier

Metropolitan Museum of Art
OGCMA s.v. "Laocoon"

Honoré Daumier, parodic adaptation of the Laocoon Group, satirical lithograph, from Actualités, 6 March 1868.

Rather than entwining Laocoon in snakes, as in the classical Vatican group (LaocoonANCIENT_Vatican), Daumier entangles Britain (qua Boudica) and her offspring in the knotty issues of the Fenian Rising, a failed rebellion against British rule in Ireland by the Fenian Brotherhood in March 1867.

Daumier's political irreverance is most on display in his "Gargantua" (1831), and his classicizing wit in "Pygmalion" (1842).

Delteil 1906 - 30, 28: no. 3632 ill.

figure 82 in Grafton, Most, and Settis, The Classical Tradition, s.v. "parodies"

Political cartoon depicting a distressed woman representing England, bound by "FENIANISM" and flanked by figures representing the "IRISH QUESTION" and "ORIENTAL QUESTION

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.