Honoré Daumier

One evening in 1872, during a party held at the home of a friend, four artists passed around a prepared copper plate and took turns sketching into it with a needle. Each contributed one or more of the plate’s sections with a subject of their choice. The casual, social context of this print’s creation indicates the ease with which artists could sketch on a plate, as if using a pen on paper.

The print was the only etching ever made by Daumier—a prolific artist in other printmaking techniques—suggesting how quickly etching techniques could be learned.