But why was this painting by Édouard Manet refused at the Salon of 1866? A simple troop child, less disturbing than the Déjeuner sur l'Herbe refused three years earlier and much wiser than the scandalous Olympia yet accepted at the Salon of 1865... This painting embodies at the time the death of academicism in favor of a modern realism which allows itself almost everything, here daring to free itself from the decor to present us a young boy "surrounded by air", totally "alive". What was shocking at the time was not so much the subject as the dimensions of the 1m60 high canvas. With this format reminiscent of that of great historical paintings, the artist overturns the hierarchy of representations for a simple little stranger... An innovative look yet inspired by Manet by a canvas painted two centuries earlier by Velasquez, Pablo de Valladolid. Here the palette is reduced to a minimum, blacks, reds, whites, yellows, worked in solid colors on the dark masses and in impasto to catch the light on the light areas. Revolutionary for some, unfinished for others... Too flat, too ugly, too simple. Faced with criticism, a voice was raised, that of Émile Zola, who declared in response to this “simplified painting”: “I do not believe that it is possible to obtain a more powerful effect with less complicated means. »

FABRE MUSEUM
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