An Excusable Error. Chickens thinking they have found the cage where they spent their early childhood, plate 21 from La Crinolomanie

An Excusable Error. Chickens thinking they have found the cage where they spent their early childhood, plate 21 from La Crinolomanie — Honoré Daumier. 1857.

Medium: Lithograph in black on white wove paper. Dimensions: Image: 20.8 × 26.9 cm (8 1/4 × 10 5/8 in.); Sheet: 27.2 × 36 cm (10 3/4 × 14 3/16 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

This lithograph focuses on the outlandish crinoline fashion, which lasted about a decade. Among other activities, Daumier’s exuberant crinolines destroy gardens, sweep up street trash, and catch their wearers in high winds and turnstiles. While this plate comes from the Actualités series, it has also been catalogued under the topic La crinolomanie (Crinoline Mania). This sheet and others by Daumier play on the support garment’s incongruous approximation of the human form. Daumier’s images stress that these contraptions, whether cage- or basket- like, were functionally useless.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.