So you want to meddle with the press!

In this declaration of the power of caricature, a heroic printer crushes a figure in his lithographic press. While the victim is faceless, the wide jowls and umbrella give him away as King Louis-Philippe of France. Known as the citizen-king, Louis-Philippe carried an umbrella rather than a scepter, a fact well-known to the French public. By 1833 Louis-Philippe had become an unpopular leader, incessantly vilified in the press by Daumier and numerous other caricaturists. This commanding image reveals that Daumier knew that he and his colleagues wielded considerable influence with their images.