Jean-François Raffaëlli

Albert Wolff (by 1889)
Paul Errera, Brussels (by 1909; by descent to the late owner)
The Estate of Gabrielle Oppenheim-Errera, Princeton, New Jersey (and sold, Christie's, New York, May 6, 1998, lot 136, illustrated)
Acquired at the above sale

Paris, 35 boulevard des Capucines, La 6eme Exposition de Peinture par Mlle. Mary Cassatt, MM. Degas, Forain, MM. Gauguin, Guillaumin, Mme. Berthe Morisot, MM. Pissarro, Raffaëlli, Rouart, Tillot, Eug. Vidal, Vignon, Zandomeneghi, 1881, no. 122
Paris, 28 bis, Avenue de l'Opera, J.F. Raffaëlli, 1884
Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1889 (lent by Albert Wolff)
Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Jean-François Raffaëlli, 1909, no. 189 (lent by Madame Paul Errera)

La Vie Moderne, Paris, April 16, 1881, illustrated
Arsène Alexandre, Jean-François Raffaëlli, Paris, 1909, opposite p. 86.
John Rewald, History of Impressionism, New York, 1973, illustrated p. 434
B. Schinman Fields, Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850-1924): The Naturalist Artist, Ann Arbor, 1979, p. 186, 439, illustrated, fig. 50
Fronia E. Wissman, "Realists among the Impressionists," The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1886, exh. cat., San Francisco, 1986, p. 338, fig. 1, illustrated 
Polly Sartori, "Jean-François Raffaëlli: A Unique Voice in the Crowd," Twenty-First Perspectives on Nineteenth Century Art, Essays in Honor of Gabriel P. Weisberg, eds. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Laurinda S. Dixon, Newark, 2008, pp. 231-7, illustrated pl. 9
Marnin Young, "Heroic Indolence: Realism and the Politics of Time in Raffaëlli's Absinthe Drinkers," Art Bulletin, vol XC, no. 2, June 2008, p. 254, illustrated p. 255, fig. 22

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work has been recently restored and should be hung as is. Painted on a piece of artist’s board, the reverse shows its original stamp and labels. There is a slightly convex surface here, but this is not very noticeable. The work is clean and nicely varnished, and it is clearly in extremely good condition. There are no retouches to the figure at all. There is a diagonal scratch that has received retouches to the left of his hip. There is a spot on the right edge near the upper right corner. There is an area which reads darkly under ultraviolet light in the lower right corner, which does not seem to correspond to any retouching. It is probably fair to say that although the work reads quite eccentrically when viewed under ultraviolet light, there are no other restorations.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Jean-François Raffaëlli was a unique voice in the Paris art establishment in the late nineteenth century.  During his lifetime he was both critically acclaimed at the Salon, where like Manet, he tenaciously sought inclusion, but he also participated in the landmark Impressionist exhibitions. Raffaëlli trained in the studio of Jean-Léon Gérôme, and also befriended Degas, who would become his ardent supporter. His reputation and ambition were such that, like Courbet and Manet, he was able to successfully mount a one-man show.  And while very little is known of his sculpture, he was represented by Théo van Gogh.  He even invented a novel implement called a bâtonnet Raffaëlli, an oil stick that yielded a medium between oil and pastel. Yet in spite of all of these accomplishments, Raffaëlli’s name has all but disappeared from the art historical canon.

After an early start depicting fête galante subjects reminiscent of the work of Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Raffaëlli’s career took a turn in 1877 when his submission to the Salon, The Family of Jean-le-Boiteux, Peasants of Plougasnou-Finistère was admired for its creativity and originality by the well-known critic Edmond Duranty.  It was also at this time that Raffaëlli met Edgar Degas.   

Unlike most of the “pure” Impressionists of the 1870s, Degas and Raffaëlli shared a predilection for drawing, which may well have been the basis for the sympathetic relationship between the two artists.  But we may never fully understand Degas’ insistence on Raffaëlli’s inclusion in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1880 and 1881.  In so doing, he ignored the outcries of Caillebotte and Gauguin, who refused to participate in these shows because they felt that Raffaëlli’s presence threatened the essential, pastoral character of Impressionism.  Historically, while the Impressionist shows of 1880 and 1881 are thought to signal the end of Impressionism, the presence of Raffaëlli actually may have advanced the notion of Realism as a significant characteristic of Impressionism.  Even Degas’ entries in the 1881 show bordered on a Zola-esque Realism, choosing as he did to include head studies of convicted murderers. 

By the 1890s, Raffaëlli was proud to call himself an Impressionist, and even falsely claimed that he had been a participant with the group since the beginning (Jean François Raffaëlli, “Impressionnistes,” Scribner’s Magazine, XVII, May 1895, pp. 630-2). But strictly speaking, he was only an Impressionist by virtue of his association with the group in 1880 and 1881, not by his style of painting.  Man Having Just Painted his Fence was one of the paintings that Raffaëlli included in the 1880 exhibition, and with it, he finally had found his muse in the inhabitants of the Paris suburbs. 

In 1879, exhausted and verging on nervous collapse brought on by his desire to put into writing his own thoughts on a modern aesthetic, Raffaëlli left Paris and settled in the suburb of Asnières.  With its incessantly spewing smokestacks, this desolate region provided the backdrop for Raffaëlli’s paintings from this period; its inhabitants his new protagonists. Commenting to Edmond de Goncourt, Raffaëlli confessed that his search to reveal the essence of a personality had taken him to Italy, Spain and Africa, only to discover what he had been seeking in his own backyard in Asnières (Edmond and Jules de Goncourt,”16 February 1888,” Journal: memoires de la vie littéraire, ed. Robert Ricatte, Paris, 1956, vol. III, pp. 755-6).  There, among the faces and expressions of its inhabitants — retired workmen, rag pickers, beggars, garlic sellers and chimney sweepers — Raffaëlli found his inspiration and the vehicle to reveal what he defined as man’s distinctive trait: character.

Even Van Gogh recognized Raffaëlli’s treatise on caractérisme as a complex theory (Letter of 6 July 1885, The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Greenwich, Ct., 1959, vol.II, pp. 394-95).  Success would depend on convincingly depicting and therefore revealing, the physiological and psychological constitution of man by using the humble people of Asnières as his models.  The critics grappled with his notion.  Albert Wolfe, the art critic for Le Figaro and the earliest owner of Man Having Just Painted his Fence, commented in his introduction for Raffaëlli’s Les Types de Paris (1889), an extensively illustrated album of stories by the most prominent Realist and Naturalist writers in Paris, that Raffaëlli was indeed a modern painter with new ideas.  But of even greater significance, he was human (Albert Wolff, “Jean François Raffaëlli,” Les Types de Paris, Paris, 1889, p. 6).

Wolff devoted much of his discussion to Man Having Just Painted his Fence, considered to be one of the masterpieces of Raffaëlli’s career.  This portly man represented another type observed in Asnières:  the petit bourgeois.  One may assume from Wolff’s comments that he had been granted a firsthand account of the personal circumstances of Raffaëlli’s model, a former workman (perhaps a foreman) who, after sixty years, had retired to a comfortable situation in the Paris suburbs (Wolff, Raffaëlli, p. 6).  Raffaëlli has depicted a modest man, whose legacy of hard work is measured by his large, calloused hands and who now takes pleasure and satisfaction in the simple task of painting the fence surrounding his house.  The bold verdant color of the fence contrasts sharply with the rather dull, featureless background.  The man pauses, standing proudly erect with green brush, green container and partially painted fence.  Is this a small act of defiance, a testimony to the resilience of the human spirit after decades of dull, mind-numbing work? Raffaëlli has said so much about this man by saying so little, and has thereby revealed his character; he has turned the intangible into the tangible.