One of the most illuminating aspects of the exhibition is its display of Monet’s caricatures, mostly executed around his native Le Havre. We tend not to think of Steve Bell and Gerald Scarfe as having any connection with the man who painted water lilies over and over again but they are heirs to a tradition he inhabited, and to which he brought just as much venom and mischief as they do today. Monet was inspired by Honoré Daumier, a celebrated caricaturist praised by Baudelaire in 1857 in one of the first serious-minded pieces of criticism about what are essentially cartoons.

Sunday Herald, March 13, 2007