Drinking absinthe

This picture is sure to include all sorts of collections of paintings on the topic of "green fairies" – half a century of the history of Swiss, English, French fascination with absinthe. The strongest tincture on 14 medicinal herbs in the mid-19th century gave French garrison in Africa to prevent malaria and other infections and for disinfection of water. Absinthe looked interesting, but because of the thujone contained in the essential oil of wormwood, equally interesting is the affect the body. Deep emerald green (and sometimes blue, reddish, yellow, brown and even black) tincture beautifully fog, when it is diluted with water, and if you drink a lot, then fog and consciousness up to the point of hallucinations and psychosis with uncontrollable aggression. By 1860 already the Prim Parisians sucked on the absinthe, pour it into dark glass bottle factories Pernod, as bitters to stimulate digestion. The demand for "fairy" ROS, to reduce the cost of the absinthe began to make industrial alcohol, it tasted all the population of France – and in 1888 absinthe sold as much as all wines together, the more that wine has become inaccessible (vineyards damaged by phylloxera). Absinthe became the cheaper, the more poisonous, "the green fairy" turned into a "green witch" that can ruin a person for a couple years, a real threat to the French nation and a concern for everyone – including artists. Who also tried absinthe, but more watched drinkers and painted what he saw – as befits the era of realism.

The realist raffaëlli called his picture "Les dèclassès" – underclass, dropped out of the social strata people-no. Before the artist served as the embodiment of man estranged from society, clochard, Gypsies, sweepers and especially junkman (1, 2, 3, 4). And now the artist stares at the destroyed cheap absinthe drinkers, as if considering the bottom and was surprised to see that there is also life with their events and feelings.

Addiction to absinthe was singled out as the subject of a number of paintings raffaëlli (1, 2). But the subject is, no matter how important, would not command the artist to professional glory. Square cloth with two gentlemen to his shoes and the battered cylinders of delighted viewers and critics how expressive contrast of dark shapes, as if flowing down, with a light background walls (looks similar and written later "Talk about guns and politics (Veterans)" and "Marriage announcements"), and a simple wooden comfort of the veranda. Moreover, these figures halved in comparison with the natural growth of painted people – the audience as if podushin to them at such a distance, to fully satisfy your curiosity, but not too excited because of the void in the eyes of both men.

Left for us and for the way delayed, unknown, the prototype of his paintings are imprinted in the memory is not weaker than portraits. And those portraits on our eyes turn to genre painting – a metaphor for how identity is disappearing in alcohol. Masterfully connecting the genre, portraiture and landscape work, even with the smell of fresh paint exhibited at the Paris Salon in April 1881, and "worthy of nothing but only praise" (instant review Henri Trianon in the newspaper "La Constitution"), now known as "The absinthe drinkers". In 2010, its estimate at Christie's auction – $2,994,500.

Author: Maria Kropacheva