Vrouw laat haar man door verrekijker turen 1845

This lithograph is by Honoré Daumier and it depicts a woman helping her husband look through a telescope. It questions the male gaze and the nature of seeing, which became particularly relevant during the Industrial Revolution. Daumier was a French printmaker and social satirist who commented on French politics and society in the 19th century. He was prolific, producing thousands of lithographs for newspapers and journals. This print belongs to a series called "Pastorales," and plays on the visual codes of landscape painting. We see a bourgeois couple positioned as if in a rural scene, but their modern clothing and the satirical caption reveal the incongruity. The man, aided by his wife, is trying to observe something far away, but the caption reveals he sees nothing. Through institutional critique, we might ask: what does it mean to look? What are the politics of looking? What are the social conditions that shape what we see? Art historians look at the prints in series as well as considering the artist's wider biography to get a more complete picture.