Urban Revolutionaries: 9 Poverty

The reality of urban life was that precious few who migrated from the country ever made their fortune in the city. For the great majority life was a constant battle to avoid poverty that, in the long run, turned out to be their only reward. Just as there were social realists who painted rural poverty in the middle of the nineteenth century, so there were a few who depicted urban poverty in its closing decades.

Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850-1924), The Ragpicker (1879), oil on panel, 77 × 69 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

During the mid-1870s, Jean-François Raffaëlli started painting the poorer residents of Paris and its surrounds. The Ragpicker from 1879 was a great success, and his work was promoted by the influential critic Joris-Karl Huysmans.

Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850–1924), Garlic Seller (c 1880), media not known, 71.8 x 48.9 cm, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA. Wikimedia Commons.

Raffaëlli’s elderly Garlic Seller from about 1880 is making his way across a muddy field just beyond one of the new industrial areas on the outskirts of Paris, his battered old wickerwork basket containing the garlic he hoped to sell. Behind him is his companion, a dog.

Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850-1924), Parisian Rag Pickers (c 1890), oil and oil crayon on board set into cradled panel, 32.7 × 27 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Raffaëlli painted these Parisian Rag Pickers in about 1890 using mixed media of oil paints and oil crayons.

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923), Distribution of Soup (1882), watercolour, dimensions not known, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.

In 1882, George Hendrik Breitner met Vincent van Gogh, and the pair went out sketching and painting in the poorer parts of The Hague. Among Breitner’s paintings of that campaign is his watercolour Distribution of Soup (1882), showing those from poor families queuing for free soup.

Fernand Pelez (1848-1913), Homeless (1883), oil on canvas, 77.5 x 136 cm, location not known. Image by Bastenbas, via Wikimedia Commons.

Most of Fernand Pelez’s paintings of the poor are deeply unsettling, often frankly depressing. His Homeless from 1883 shows a worn and weary mother and her five children living on the street. She stares from sunken eyes straight at the viewer, as her children huddle in filthy blankets and sacking around her.

Fernand Pelez (1848-1913), A Martyr – The Violet Vendor (1885), media and dimensions not known, Petit Palais, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Pelez’s painting became even more pointed, as in A Martyr – The Violet Vendor from 1885, showing a child of the street. One of the small bunches of violets has fallen from his tray. His eyes are closed, and his mouth agape: is he dead asleep, or simply dead?

Christian Krohg (1852–1925), The Struggle for Existence (1889), oil on canvas, 300 x 225 cm, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Norway. Wikimedia Commons.

In the late 1880s the Norwegian artist Christian Krohg had been working on his next major painting, The Struggle for Existence (also translated as The Struggle for Survival) (1889). It shows Karl Johan Street in Oslo in the depths of winter, almost deserted except for a tight-packed crowd of poor women and children queuing for free bread. This was Oslo’s main street at the time, and three years later was to be the setting for Edvard Munch’s famous painting of Evening on Karl Johan Street.

The people are wrapped up in patched and tatty clothing, clutching baskets and other containers for the food. A disembodied hand is passing a single bread roll out to them, from within the pillars at the left edge. That was yesterday’s bread; now stale, the baker is giving it away only because he cannot sell it. A policeman, wearing a heavy coat and fur hat, walks in the distance, down the middle of the icy street, detached from the scene.

Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853–1924), The Night Hostel (or, The Soup Kitchen) (1891), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Better known for his many paintings of schools and children, Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy’s painting of The Night Hostel or The Soup Kitchen (1891) shows homeless women and children being fed in what appears to be almost a prison.

Erik Henningsen (1855–1930), Evicted (1892), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Statens Museum for Kunst (Den Kongelige Malerisamling), Copenhagen, Denmark. Wikimedia Commons.

In Denmark, Erik Henningsen’s Evicted from 1892 shows a family of four being evicted into the street in the winter snow. With them are their meagre possessions, including a saw suggesting the father may be a carpenter. In the background he is still arguing with a policeman.