“Sir . . . Sir . . . Siiir . . . Christ, it’s annoying to have the runs when the supervisor is supervising!,” plate 13 from Professors and Rascals

Honoré Daumier’s satirical works capture comic moments in daily life; the series Professors and Rascals illustrates scenes from elementary school classrooms. In this print, a young boy desperately attempts to summon the teacher’s attention to be excused to the bathroom, but the teacher is asleep. In another, a student grimaces after a teacher finds a novel smuggled inside a textbook. Lithographs such as these, and their accompanying captions, were published widely in magazines in 19th-century France.