Stop and Look: Two Peasant Boys and a Black Servant-boy by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
The English title of this picture calls its protagonists “peasant boys” but it’s most likely that these children were painted from the artist’s own sons. The importunate young water-carrier who’s being denied some of the tart may have been another member of his household: Felipe (or perhaps Juan), the thirteen-year-old son of a servant. The smallest boy, grinning, has his hand on Felipe’s thigh, a friendly gesture that seems to contradict the refusal to share the tart, so we know that the little scene was “set up” by Murillo from models to create what in the age of Joshua Reynolds in the next century would be called a “fancy picture’” – a scene of fantasy or make-believe.
But it’s a totally realistic subject, the two white boys convincing as peasants with very basic clothing, bare feet and simple refreshment that they are anxious to keep for themselves. The predominant feeling is of sheer pleasure in the unaffected childishness of the boys, and for Murillo’s audience precisely the entertainment supplied by a “make-believe” representation of poverty – the misfortune of another class. It’s a very different world from the saints and angels that populate Murillo’s wonderfully sensitive religious subjects: the preoccupations of the prosperous classes of Spain’s golden age.
The child’s hand on Felipe’s leg is a delightful detail: although they are taking part in a story, a little drama, the children are all in truth the artist’s models, and part of his household; there’s no real antagonism between them. Another picture of peasant boys in the collection at Dulwich shows a mischievous-looking child inviting another to join him in a game of “pelota” with bat and ball.
In this picture again, food comes into it: the invitee has his mouth full of bread and is carrying a jug, which he will have to relinquish if he’s to join the game. These are hardly weighty moral difficulties, but they give point to the otherwise slight subject matter, and make us feel that the boys have their own inherent moral identities, and can make decisions, however trivial, for themselves. It’s a slight, perhaps ironic, echo of the serious issues propounded by the religious and historical canvases that Murillo and his fellow-artists made their reputations with, and which formed their principal output.
Murillo’s place at Dulwich – four major pictures and several copies or contemporary imitations – reflects his significance for the period when the collection was assembled: in the late eighteenth century not only was Reynolds himself influenced by his “fancy” subjects, but another great portraitist, Thomas Gainsborough, modelled his later style on the mellifluous softness and muted colour of Murillo’s warmly approachable way of painting. And to this day these pictures remain among the most loved of the Old Masters. It’s worth being reminded that the intellectual and religious rigours of the Spanish Golden Age had this very human side.
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