The Night Walkers

The Night Walkers belongs to Daumier's documentation of nocturnal Paris — the city after dark, when the social routines of daytime gave way to the different populations and purposes of the night. Night walkers in nineteenth-century Paris ranged from the wealthy emerging from theaters and balls to the poor who used darkness for purposes they preferred not to perform in daylight — from lovers and flâneurs to the desperate and the criminal. Daumier's nocturnal subjects carry the particular atmosphere of nineteenth-century urban darkness before electric light, when streets were lit by gas lamps that created pools of warmth in general darkness and the city's nighttime populations moved through a more ambiguous and potentially threatening environment. The subject connects to Daumier's broader interest in liminal social spaces and transitional moments — the city between its daytime and nighttime identities.

The nocturnal setting requires Daumier to work with minimal light sources against a dark ground. He uses the gas lamp glow or moonlight to create selective illumination that picks out moving figures from the darkness, with the warm-cool contrast of artificial versus natural night light creating the.