Description
| Year of creation: | c. 1892–1900 |
| Original size: | 55.0 cm x 46.0 cm |
| Painting style: | Naive art (Primitivism), Post-Impressionist period |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia |
The Family, c. 1892–1900
A row in front of a white wall
The canvas is landscape and the scene is set out like a group photograph: a family stands
in a single row in front of the whitewashed side wall of a building. A band of red brick runs
along the foot of the wall, and in the wall are openings with pale green shutters – two of
them open onto blackness – and a tall reddish-brown wooden door. The background is therefore
flat and close; nobody stands in depth, everyone is pressed into one band in front of the
wall.
A vine that grows like a tree
A slender trunk climbs the wall from the left and spreads above into branches with small
green leaves that reach across almost the whole width of the canvas. The museum’s record
calls this plant a vine growing like a tree. Its net of branches is the only thing that opens
the scene upwards; without it the upper third of the picture would be blank wall.
Barrel, bottle and cups
Among the men at the left lies a wooden barrel with dark hoops, set at knee height. A
bearded man holds a dark green bottle, and several others hold small pale cups in their
hands. It is exactly these three things – barrel, bottle and cups – that the Barnes
Foundation’s record cites as the sign of a celebration, and it offers three possibilities: a
birth, a baptism, or the wine harvest. The museum does not choose between them, so neither do
we.
Who stands in the row
At the left are four men in dark suits with white collars; at the right three women: the
first in a black dress with a white collar, the second in a cream dress with a red-brown
belt, the third in dark blue with white cuffs. A child in dark sits among them. Some of the
faces overlap at the shoulder, so we do not count them exactly; the museum names nobody, and
neither do we.
The child on the rose cloth
In front, on the bright green grass, a baby in a white dress sits on a rose-coloured
cloth, legs stretched out. It is placed lower and further forward than everyone else and is
the only one not standing in the row. That single figure breaks the strict arrangement and
gives the scene its quiet domestic feeling. A comparably ordered group portrait is The Wedding Party, and
a very different row of figures is Artillerymen.
The museum and the record
The original is held by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia under accession number
BF581, under the title The Family, in French La famille. The museum records
it as oil on canvas measuring 46 x 55 cm and dates it to about 1892-1900. The record also
notes that it was exactly this straightforward and at the same time mysterious treatment that
so impressed younger Parisian painters, among them Pablo Picasso. A double portrait from the
same series is The Past and the Present, and a portrait of a woman outdoors is Portrait of a Woman in a Landscape.
How we make this canvas
We make the picture as a hand-painted oil on canvas reproduction, to order and in the size
you choose. The faces are the demanding part: there are a great many of them in a single row and each
has to be given its own expression, or the row turns into a repeated pattern. So they are
painted one at a time, and only then is the dark plane of the clothing that joins them
brought into agreement. Because the work is done by hand, every copy differs a little from
the last. The full range by this painter is in the Henri Rousseau gallery.
