Emigrants and fugitives are a recurrent theme in Daumier’s work; after 1848 the settings always show extremely dramatic effects of modeling and chiaroscuro, which tends to fuse the figures in successive waves of mass in movement.
One drawing with this composition was to be found, in 1958, in the Claude Roger-Marx collection, in Paris (Lassaigne, fig. 112). It is known that the artist modeled two versions of The Emigrants, one in wax and the other in terracota, the latter remaining with his friend, sculptor Victor Geffroy-Dechaume. Before he died, Geffroy-Dechaume made a plaster version of each of them, and after his death five plaster copies were made of the second version. The Clémenti foundation then made two editions in bronze, while five others were made by Siot Decauville, and a further seven by Georges Rudier, all from the second version. One bronze version from the Geffroy-Dechaume plaster was put up for sale by Sotheby’s, New York, on May 26, 1994, (lot 83). Other editions belong to the Roger-Marx and Gerstenberg collections in Berlin (Fuchs, n. 172b). In addition there is a relief in metal (32 x 71 cm) in a private collection and two reliefs in bronze also entitled The Emigrants in the National Museum of Stockholm (inv. 2251) and in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.
— Unknown authorship, 1998
