Watercolor with gouache highlights on paper, signed with initials 'H.D.' lower left. 10 x 7 1/4 in. (sheet), 20 x 30 in. (frame). Provenance: A private collection. Literature: Bradley Smith, Erotic Art of the Masters, illus. p.53. Note: Honoré-Victorin Daumier was a printmaker, painter and caricaturist whose work offered satirical commentary on the social and political life in France during the 19th century. Daumier's watercolor drawings are considered some of his finest work, and among these drawings are a small group of erotic subjects that the German art critic Ernst Fuchs considered to be among Daumier's greatest achievements. 19th century France was a dichotomy of enlightenment and repression, out of which came many erotic works of art. Daumier's erotic drawings are filled with satire and the artist's signature wit. The figures are shown in unglamorous and unromantic situations, mirroring the human condition and shattering previous concepts of permissible erotic subjects. Fuchs considered two of Daumier's best erotic drawings to be the one here, and Untitled, also from 1863, which was sold Stair Galleries, October 28, 2017. Both works were dedicated to Daumier's good friend Louise.