Triumphant Advocate

Between 1845 and 1848 Daumier published a long run of lithographs in the Paris daily Le Charivari under the title Les Gens de justice, the people of the law courts. Lawyers posture, plead and pocket their fees all the way through it. This small canvas comes from the same years and draws on the same cast. One advocate in his black gown fills the foreground, his bulk almost a silhouette, while the court's staircase behind him melts into an empty blur. Whatever he has just won is left to the imagination, and only his face tells us how pleased he is with it. In 1921 the Glasgow shipowner William Burrell bought the picture. By 1925 it had crossed to Boston and the collector John Taylor Spaulding, who left it to the museum in 1948.