Robert Macaire renait de ses cendres

Honoré Daumier's lithograph shows three figures locked in comic confrontation: a rotund bourgeois behind a counter clutches papers with smug authority, while the central charlatan — Robert Macaire, arms flung wide in theatrical outrage — dominates the space between him and a lean, cringing accomplice. Macaire's exaggerated jawline and wild gesture are classic Daumier physiognomy: class caricature rooted in the era's pseudo-scientific belief that skull shape and facial angle revealed character, used here to mock the swindling entrepreneur as social type rather than individual. The lithograph belongs to Daumier's *Robert Macaire* series for *Le Charivari*, extending a satirical print tradition running from Hogarth's moral sequences through Rowlandson and Gillray. These sequential character studies — same figure, recurring vice, new scheme — are direct ancestors of the recurring comic-strip protagonist.