This collection includes more than 850 prints by Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-1879) that were donated to the Chazen by Helen Wurdemann. Graduating from the UW in 1915, Ms. Wurdemann, in the 1930s, was the Baronessa Guzzardi living on her husband's family estate in Italy. Just before WW II, she returned to America to serve as the West Coast art critic for Art in America and, subsequently, director of the Los Angeles Art Association.

The Wurdemann Collection includes prints from throughout Daumier's prolific career. He created his first political prints in 1830. Daumier produced satires of Louis Philippe and his ministers until an 1835 press law required official approval of caricatures. After this, Daumier focused his creative wit on bourgeois society. He lampooned the foibles of the French, particularly Parisians, in such series as Le Bon bourgeois (The Good Bourgeois) Locataires et propriétaires (Lodgers and Landlords) and Actualités (Current Events). In his series Les Gens de justice (Types of Justice), he aimed his satiric barbs specifically at lawyers and judges.

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