Honore Daumier was born in Marseilles, France on February 26, 1808. He was the son of a Marseille glazier who wrote a little poetry on the side and who thought so much of his own talent that in 1816 he decided to move himself and his family to Paris. Over the next dozen years, the family lived in eight different apartments in Paris. There was never enough money, and the experience of hard times would mark Daumier for life.

At the age of twelve, Honore became a messenger boy for a process server's office and then a clerk for a bookstore - jobs that opened up to him every corner of Paris. He sketched everything he saw and finally started studying art with an academician whose idea of instruction was to have...