Les Alarmistes et les Alarmés – On peut aller cetter bande d’hommes armés

Daumier published hundreds of caricatures and cartoons lampooning the insecurities of the Parisian bourgeoisie. These two take as their specific topic fears and frustrations exacerbated by the fabric of the city of Paris prior to the large-scale urban renovations by Baron Haussmann and others during the second half of the nineteenth century. Before these changes, the city largely retained its medieval layout, riddled with dark and narrow streets that sheltered criminals and frustrated sanitation. “Volé!…Rue vide gousset…” shows a chagrined bourgeois realizing he has just been pickpocketed. An actual street, the rue Vide Gousset remains in truncated form in present-day Paris as the narrowest entry into the Place des Victoires. In the eighteenth century, it was known as the Rue Vieille-Doucet; however, Daumier uses the name popular in his day, which translates to “Empty Pocket Street.” Another important effect of the city’s medieval layout was the susceptibility of streets to blockage by barricades, most notably thrown up by insurgents during the July Revolution of 1830 and the Revolution of 1848. The widening of streets and the creation of new boulevards by Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III constituted a direct response to this situation. In Les Alarmistes, Daumier pokes fun at Parisian citizens who are ready to see uprisings around every corner. In reality, the group of “armed men” that causes them to scurry for safety indoors is just a gang of boys playing soldiers.

(Andrew C. Weislogel, “Mirror of the City: The Printed View in Italy and Beyond, 1450–1940,” catalogue accompanying an exhibition organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, curated by Andrew C. Weislogel and Stuart M. Blumin, and presented at the Johnson Museum August 11–December 23, 2012)