Don Quixotte and the Dead Mule

Daumier produced multiple versions of Don Quixote encountering a dead mule, returning to the subject across more than a decade as he refined his interpretation of Cervantes's knight in relation to death and futility. This 1867 canvas held at the Musée d'Orsay is one of the later iterations, representing a more fully developed version of the composition than the Metropolitan panel from around 1860. By the 1860s Daumier's Don Quixote paintings had become recognized as important works within his oeuvre, appreciated by fellow artists and by critics who saw in his treatment of the literary subject a depth of feeling that his satirical work might obscure. The Musée d'Orsay's version allows direct comparison with other Daumier Quixote paintings in French national collections. Each version tends to vary the proportions of the composition — the balance between open landscape and figure — while maintaining the essential subject of solitary confrontation with mortality. Daumier's Quixote never triumphs; he endures.

The 1867 version shows Daumier's mature handling, with looser brushwork and more atmospheric landscape than his earlier treatments. The figure of Quixote is elongated and roughly handled, while the landscape is rendered in broad washes of brown and grey that create mood rather than topographic.