Jules Blin Oil On Canvas

When I saw this painting for the first

first time, I couldn't help but laugh: it reminded me of my tender youth (yesterday...) when my colleagues nicknamed me "The specialist in unsaleables"

I must say that many depositions, crucifixions and other tortures passed through my hands...

I remember an extraordinary "Job sur son tas de fumier" (Job on his dung heap), a 19th-century hyper-realist measuring 4 meters by three that I sold in the process Here, this impressive painting was exhibited at the 1879 Salon under the title "Dernieres ressources. en route pour le Mont de Pieté"; in a bourgeois interior, the husband, ill, can't go to work, so his wife, their little daughter in her arms, gathers the few remaining belongings to take as a pledge to the famous public utility institution that had been created to fight usurers and come to the aid of those going through hard times...

The artist, Jules BLIN (1851-?) was familiar with this kind of painting with a more or less moralistic subject matter, which the new bourgeoisie of the second half of the nineteenth century was fond of, probably to refer to their own happiness...

The following year, he exhibited "Art, misère, désespoir, folie!" which is now at the Musée de Dijon and showed us a "cursed painter" in his studio, having broken his palette and punctured a painting with his foot who is about to commit suicide with a revolver!

A remarkable analysis of this painting was broadcast on the excellent program "D'art D'art" when it was hung in the exhibition

"Bohèmes" at the Grand Palais in 2012.

Oil on canvas 101 X 82 cm, dressed in a large period gilded frame 127 X 106 cm.

Many thanks to Eric Lhoste for the descroption.