Honoré Daumier 1808–79
'The Print Collectors'
About 1863–5
Chalk, watercolour and pen and ink
Museum no. CAI 118

Ionides greatly admired Daumier’s spirited draughtsmanship and acquired several important finished drawings by him. This scene of old-fashioned connoisseurs echoes the novelist Henry James recollections from the 1860s of ‘the old Parisian quay, the belittered print-shop, the pleasant afternoon, … estampes suspended in the window and doorway … extracted, piece by piece from musty portfolios’. This was probably bought by Ionides in 1872 for £100.