Honoré Daumier

The tremendous appeal during the late nineteenth century of Jean de la Fontaine's Fables (originally published beginning in 1668) is borne out by the large number of editions issued in the early 1850s, many enlivened by the most accomplished illustrators of the day, including Paul Gavarni, J. J. Grandville, and Cham. The Fables also inspired an ambitious project involving artists gathering at Théodore Rousseau's home in Barbizon in 1855. Rousseau, Daumier, and Millet proposed producing an illustrated volume of the Fables. The idea was supported by the poet Martin Etcheverry and their fellow Barbizon artists Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Pena, Jules Dupré, and Antoine Barye, and with the intention of involving Delacroix in the project. According to Rousseau's biographer Alfred Sensier, who wrote of the evening gathering, Daumier was assigned or selected seven fables to illustrate. The project never came to fruition, although the artist executed at least six drawings, including two highly finished watercolors, relating to three of the subjects among his share of fables.
By 1849 and during the 1850s, Daumier mined the Fables for subject matter for paintings and drawings and was therefore well-suited to contribute to Rousseau's project. Daumier would have been familiar with earlier illustrated editions, and indeed, the present composition contains the same elements as the vignette for the tale in the 1746 edition illustrated by Etienne Fessard (1714-1777). Laughton suggests that Millet and Daumier looked through Rousseau's copy (probably the second or third edition) while discussing the project and “some images stuck in their minds.”
Two drawings are preparatory for this finished watercolor depicting The Schoolmaster and the Drowning Child. An initial sketch in pen and ink with wash (Claude Roger-Marx collection, Paris) serves as a quickly drafted première pensée for the composition depicting the schoolmaster gazing at the child. A subsequent study in black chalk, with pen and ink and wash (location unknown), captures the final pose of the schoolmaster, stiff-backed with a protruding stomach, looking sternly down his nose at the boy, whose final form is unresolved. Daumier retained the elements of this second study in this finished watercolor, to which he added a landscape setting. This sheet also functions as an independent drawing, surpassing what would have been needed for the engraver and suggesting that the project transcended designs for printed illustrations.
As Sensier keenly observed, each artist was responsible for subjects that suited his temperament: Daumier's being “irony and popular morality.” The Fable of the Boy and the Schoolmaster (Book I, 19) recounts how, having fallen into the Seine and grasping a willow branch, a boy calls to a passing schoolmaster to save him. The schoolmaster reprimands the boy for his foolish behavior before fishing him from the river. La Fontaine caustically remarked on the need for such pedants to preach before lending help: “No matter what the task, Their precious tongues must teach; Their help in need you ask, You must first hear them preach,” a wry sentiment perfectly in tune with Daumier's own outlook.