Parliamentarians: Daumier Sculpture

Honoré Daumier is better known to most people as a graphic artist, and perhaps as a painter, than as a sculptor, yet he created many sculptures, which often preceded the lithographs and drawings that relate to them. His modeled heads of politicians, originally painted in polychrome (though also cast in bronze) are part caricatures of notables of the time and part physiological human `types.' Using creative lighting, sound and camera work, the film brings alive the Parliamentarians and other works by Daumier, setting them in dramatic context and deploying the figures almost as if they are in a puppet theater. This is one of the many rare film discoveries which the Roland Collection has brought out of undeserved obscurity.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.