A man with a past, financial problems, just an unhappy little grey man, a dusty veteran of Lepanto. He invented someone who fights against a wicked world, who stands up to it, who takes on every giant, a hero straight out of a twentieth-century western, lonely, simple, confident in his assessment of the situation.
Why did Daumier, who painted with a single stroke painting the expressive head of the nag in a single stroke, save paint for the head of the horseman?
It’s one of the most enigmatic portraits of a true madness. Five years earlier, in 1863, Gustave Doré published his magnificent, detailed illustrations for Cervantes’ novel. The graphic depiction of the moment when a galloping imagination collides with reality was to become a compulsory illustration for both the matriculation examination and the driving test for all category.
In Doré’s illustrations, we gaze greedily at the nuanced details. When we look at Daumier’s painting, which could illustrate and comment on any corner of the world with equal skill, it is as if we looking into a morning mirror. It takes a moment before we sleepily realise what we are seeing.
The world and the hero traversing it are like two drops of colour, one careless smear of ochre. Again, before dusk, we will have to struggle to distinguish ourselves even a little from the background.
Honoré Victorin Daumier, Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, 51 × 32 cm, Neue Pinakothek, Munich
