Le jour n'est pas plus pur

A lithograph — Daumier's chosen weapon — shows two theatrical figures in close, conspiratorial profile: a dark-bearded man in a red vest and a helmeted warrior bearing a quiver of arrows. Both faces are drawn with the exaggerated hooked noses and jutting chins that characterized stock comic-villain physiognomy in 19th-century French caricature, a visual shorthand carrying unmistakable ethnic prejudice common to the period's stage tradition and popular print culture. The French caption — *Le jour n'est pas plus pur* ('The day is no purer') — quotes Racine's *Phèdre*, suggesting theatrical or political irony. Daumier, working for *Le Charivari*, perfected the lithographic caricature tradition linking Gillray and Rowlandson to the sequential panel humor that would become the comic strip.