Émile Munier

Emile Munier began exhibiting paintings at the Salon in Paris in 1869 and by the late 1870s, he had carved for himself a distinctive niche within the coterie of artists around William Bouguereau, the generally acknowledged chef-d'école of high academic art.  For Munier, well-drawn, subtly colored scenes from the lives of children or the escapades of playful cupids provided a highly rewarding focus to a career.

Probably painted around 1885, The Broken Vase exemplifies the importance and complexity that the painting of children had taken on in the last half of the 19th-century.  Awake before her parents or governess, a young child playing with a toy horse and whip has managed to knock over a porcelain vase or bowl.  As the noise of crashing china brings a witness to her mischief, the little girl draws back from the viewer.  With her large eyes lifted in wary entreaty beneath her raised hand, her pouty mouth quietly bespeaks a spunky defiance.  Just as the child's attitude is meant to call forth reluctant forgiveness in a justifiably irritated parent, so is the painting intended to draw complicated reactions from an indulgent viewer.  The chemise slipping off the child's shoulder and the shattered bibelot connect The Broken Vase directly to a century's worth of images of disheveled young women whose broken water pitchers, spilled milk jugs, or upended egg baskets were widely recognized symbols of lost and irretrievable virtue.  Although such subtle sexual innuendo can be troubling to a 21st century audience, parents and grandparents of Munier's day recognized in the painting merely a cautionary note that childish misbehavior, no matter how bewitching, must be confronted, lest it lead to more serious consequences.  After all, the fine furniture and exotic tapestries and textiles with which Munier surrounded the naughty child would be seen as testament to the basic goodness and strength of the household that sheltered her -- just as the painter's success in depicting such a wealth of surface effects provided a testament to his own skill and artistic education.

This catalogue entry was written by Alexandra Murphy.