Caricature of *Le Constitutionnel*

A monstrously fat dowager fills a theater box, swaddled in ruffles, a wreath of roses perched on her wig, a fan drooping from one gloved hand as she peers down her nose at the stage. The mock-genealogical caption crowns her with an absurd string of names ending in "de Constitutionnel." She is not a person but a newspaper: *Le Constitutionnel*, the smug, complacent voice of the propertied middle class, rendered by Daumier as bloated self-satisfaction in the flesh. Turning an institution into a single grotesque body is caricature's oldest and sharpest move, and it is precisely how a comic assigns a recurring character to an idea. Drawn on stone for *La Caricature* in 1834, the plate shows Daumier's modelling at full strength, the flesh built up in greasy crayon until it nearly sweats.