An Unhappy Family

The French state commissioned this canvas in 1849, a year after the revolution of 1848 and the bloody June uprising of Paris workers. Tassaert answered with a garret under a sloping skylight. A mother sits upright in a worn armchair, her eyes turned upward, while her daughter kneels and rests her head in her lap. At the foot of the chair a small brazier glows. The two have shut themselves in with its charcoal fumes, which is why the picture was also known as The Suicide. A print of the Virgin and Child is pinned to the bare wall, and a pair of scissors hangs from the girl's waist. After the Salon of 1850 it went to the Musée du Luxembourg, spent 1935 to 1986 on loan to a museum in Poitiers and came to the Musée d'Orsay.