Daumier’s paintings show he is at heart a sculptor

There hasn’t been a decent Daumier exhibition in this country for more than half a century, so art lovers have had to be content with the handful of pictures in national collections and books of reproductions. This works all right for the lithographs, which were after all made to be reproduced, and it is on his high status as a satirical printmaker that Daumier’s fame principally rests. And yet he is frequently lauded by artists who talk about him as a major draughtsman, sculptor and painter, not just as a political and social cartoonist, however fine. The chance to see a show of all aspects of his work is thus very welcome: how does the Academy acquit itself of the responsibility? The first thing that must be said is that there are rather too many lithographs on display. As I’ve mentioned, they reproduce extremely well so we don’t really need to see them on the walls (except perhaps to recognise their scale) — they could easily have been reserved to the catalogue.