The Hypochondriac (Le Malade imaginaire) – (Honoré Daumier) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Honoré Daumier

Date: 1870

Size: 20 x 27 cm

Museum: The Courtauld Institute of Art (London, United Kingdom)

Technique: Drawing

This drawing relates to a group of works illustrating the satirical play Le Malade imaginaire (The Hypochondriac) by the French playwright Molière (1622–1673). It appears to illustrate the scene in which Doctor Purgon berates the patient Argan for not using the cure that he had provided. Daumier has deviated from the script, however, as the scene requires Purgon, Argan and a maid, rather than two doctors. In Daumier’s caricature, the apparently bedridden patient swathes himself in a blanket up to his chin as if in a shroud, exposing only his face to the visiting doctor and his assistant. Propped up on excessively bolstered cushions and sporting a nightcap with a bow, the patient’s impression of fragility instead conveys a sense of the ludicrous. The physicians are no less farcical: the doctor at his bedside raises one hand as if to silence his patient while making his learned pronouncement. Daumier’s rendering of the doctor’s haughty expression, with his raised brows, downturned mouth and heavylidded eyes looking down the bridge of his nose, captures the essence of the physician’s self-important lecture. His assistant, meanwhile, squints through his glasses at the patient while holding an oversized syringe for administering an enema. Though Daumier has added the comic element of the myopic doctor wielding an instrument requiring delicacy and precision, he has retained the theatrical origins of the story through the presence of the draped curtains in the background and the lighting, evocative of the illuminated stage. Among Daumier’s works illustrating Molière’s play are two paintings, The Hypochondriac (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) and Dr Diafoirus (Bakwin collection, New York), dating to 1860–63 and 1870 respectively. As Daumier did not routinely date his drawings, this sheet cannot be dated with any certainty, but may have been executed around that time.