Don Quixote and the Dead Mule
This work, one of many versions of the subject painted by Daumier, illustrates a passage from Don Quixote, the epic Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616). The elderly knight, accompanied by his squire, Sancho Panza, encounters the body of a dead mule, emaciated after long exposure to the elements in a wild landscape. The encounter is one in a series exposing the breadth of human folly, a theme linking Cervantes’s fictional characters with the panoply of modern types who populate much of Daumier’s art.
Artwork Details
- Title: Don Quixote and the Dead Mule
- Artist: Honoré Daumier (French, Marseilles 1808–1879 Valmondois)
- Date: after 1864
- Medium: Oil on wood
- Dimensions: 9 3/4 x 18 1/8 in. (24.8 x 46 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1909
- Object Number: 09.198
- Curatorial Department: European Paintings
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