In this controversial lithograph, which was to be published in Charles Philipon’s newspaper La Caricature on December 16, 1831, Daumier depicted the corpulent monarch Louis-Philippe seated on a throne, gobbling bags of coins being hauled up a ramp by tiny laborers, the coins having been wrung from the poor of France by his ministers. On the lower right, a crowd of his poverty-stricken subjects stand waiting miserably to turn over what little money they have. Milling around the throne are Louis-Philippe’s favorites, also extravagantly fat; they are collecting commissions, …
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