Three Lawyers

Three Lawyers, dated around 1855 and held at The Phillips Collection, is one of Daumier's most concentrated treatments of the legal professional group — three men in the robes and caps of the French bar engaged in professional conversation that partakes of both display and conspiracy. The French legal profession was Daumier's most persistent satirical target throughout his career, and his paintings of lawyers convert the exaggeration of his lithographic caricatures into the tonal language of oil. Three figures in professional robes allowed him to explore the dynamics of professional self-presentation — who speaks, who listens, who performs — within a limited compositional space. The Phillips Collection, which holds the most significant group of Daumier paintings in America, places this work in the context of his full legal series. The three lawyers' robes create simplified dark forms against which their faces — expressive of professional cunning, self-satisfaction, and tactical calculation — emerge with concentrated force.

The three figures are organized into a close group, their robes creating a unified dark mass from which three heads emerge with individual expression. Daumier's handling differentiates the faces through tonal modeling — one lit, one in shadow, one in profile — creating a visual triad that gives the.