The Fire

The resounding success of The Fire at the Salon of 1850-1851 confirms Antigna's place in the emerging realist school, with a predilection for the life of the poorer classes. Pils, Courbet and Bonvin, in different veins, bear witness to a new sensibility, not unconnected in Antigna's case with his training in the studio of Paul Delaroche, champion of dramatic ettets, for example in Jane Gray (1834, London, National Gallery) or Edouard's children (1831, Musée du Louvre), which place the visitor in the role of spectator.

His depiction of a working-class family trapped by flames is a hit with audiences who enjoy cathartic thrills. As always in Antigna's work, the narrative is carried by the expression of each character: the mother, who discovers with horror the flames rising up to the attic, the frightened little girl who seeks protection in her mother's skirts, the son, who tries to gather the meagre possessions, the sleeping child, alone unaware of the disastrous fate awaiting them. In the background of the composition, the impotent father cries out through the window for help, but it's too late, as the opening of the door heralds the draught that will set fire to the attic in a matter of seconds.

Following his master's principle of showing the moment that precedes the tragedy and makes us shudder at the idea of the horror to come, Antigna takes the public into the everyday life of the working classes, treating in the format of history painting what could have been no more than a genre scene based on a news item. Unlike his contemporary Courbet, who exhibited Les Casseurs de pierres (Destroyed) the same year, Antigna's painting reformulates the stakes of representation, moving it from the Romantics' forgotten past to the present, where it explores the neglected strata of society. Acquired by the French State, it remained in the Musée du Luxembourg until 1886.