Parisian Rag Pickers
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Object Label
Jean-François Raffaëlli frequently painted ragpickers, so called because they made their meager living on the margins of industrialized capitalism, collecting scraps and castoffs for resale. Here, a man and woman traverse the bleak landscape between Paris and its expanding suburbs. Such members of the urban lower classes were displaced when Paris was transformed at midcentury into a modern city of broad boulevards and leisure spaces. Many ragpickers struggled to maintain their livelihoods in the later nineteenth century after official sanitation programs limited where and when they could ply their trade.
Raffaëlli wrote that he associated his ragpickers with “an idea of liberty, of savage independence,” claiming “these men have no masters.” Ragpickers were considered poetic figures, but also ones whose lives on the periphery amid refuse led them to be classified as “foreign” outsiders. Racialized criticism of the time noted what were perceived as the darker, “dirty” skin tones of Raffaëlli’s ragpickers and characterized them as immigrants “who haven’t yet gotten their letters of naturalization.”
Caption
Jean-François Raffaëlli French, 1850–1924. Parisian Rag Pickers, ca. 1890. Oil and oil crayon on board set into cradled panel, Cradled Panel: 13 3/8 × 11 3/16 × 11/16 in. (34 × 28.4 cm) frame (Framed in microclimate): 22 1/8 × 20 1/8 × 4 1/4 in. (56.2 × 51.1 × 10.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Henry C. Lawrence, 10.88. No known copyright restrictions (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 10.88_SL1.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Parisian Rag Pickers
Date
ca. 1890
Geography
Place made: France
Medium
Oil and oil crayon on board set into cradled panel
Classification
Dimensions
Cradled Panel: 13 3/8 × 11 3/16 × 11/16 in. (34 × 28.4 cm) frame (Framed in microclimate): 22 1/8 × 20 1/8 × 4 1/4 in. (56.2 × 51.1 × 10.8 cm)
Signatures
Lower left: "J.F. RAFFAËLLI"
Credit Line
Gift of Henry C. Lawrence
Accession Number
10.88
Rights
No known copyright restrictions
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