03 — ARTWORK
The Absinth Drinkers
RAFFAËLLI, Jean-François · 1881 →
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 110 x 110 cm
- TYPE
- Genre
PALETTE
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- FILE
- 1218 × 1200 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
Raffaëlli was a painter of suburban scenes which were sometimes pessimistic and sometimes rather tender. Essentially self-taught, he essayed various thematic areas, and alternated between the SalonIn the French language of the 18th and 19th centuries it designated an actual exhibition space, as well as the academic art exhibitions staged in the Salon d'Apollon of the Louvre since 1667. From 1737, the exhibitions took place biennially and, after the French Revolution, annually in the Salon Carré of the Louvre in Paris. Towards the end of the 19th century the official Salon jury was dissolved in order to make way for a committee of state-approved artists, i.e. former Salon members, who created the highly influential Société des Artistes Français. and other exhibition strategies. His contact with the Impressionists was merely loose, and consisted partly in a shared interest in social fringe groups. At first he painted Breton peasants, the urban alcoholics and rag-and-bone collectors. He also shared the Impressionists' concern with the persuasive atmospherics of sketchy pictorial spatial contexts.
The Absinth Drinkers, a semi-lifesize canvasA woven cloth used as a support for painting. The best-quality canvas is made of linen; other materials used are cotton, hemp, and jute. It is now so familiar a material that the word 'canvas' has become almost a synonym for an oil painting, but it was not until around 1500 that it began to rival the wooden panel (which was more expensive and took longer to prepare) as the standard support for movable paintings (the transition came later in Northern Europe than in Italy). Canvas is not suitable for painting on until it has been coated with a ground, which isolates the fabric from the paint; otherwise it will absorb too much paint, only very rough effects will be obtainable, and parts of the fabric may be rotted by the pigments. It must also be made taut on a stretcher or by some other means. exhibited in 1881 as The Down and Outs, would have appealed to Degas for the canvas structure and the subject of the lonely outsiders, but also the delicately nuanced colouring.
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-rc5ec9e2360a658,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {The Absinth Drinkers by RAFFAËLLI, Jean-François},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-09},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/raffalli-jean-franois-r78533a696c3b7d/the-absinth-drinkers-rc5ec9e2360a658},
urldate = {2026-09-09},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-09. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
