Jean-François RAFFAËLLI (Paris, 1850 - 1924) The House where we always fight Oil and black pencil on cardboard. Signed lower right. 43 x 49 cm Provenance : - Mmes F... D... - Their sale, Me H. Jouault, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 4-5 June 1897, n° 20. - Anonymous sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 17, 1933, n° 67 (sold for 4750 frs). Exhibition : Works by Jean-François Raffaëlli, Paris, 28 bis, avenue de l'Opéra, March 15-April 15, 1884, n° 38. Bibliography : - G. Geffroy, Jean-François Raffaëlli, in La Justice, Paris, April 12, 1884, 5th year, n° 1550, p. 1. - F. Fénéon, Le musée du Luxembourg, in Le Symboliste, Paris, 1886, 1st year, n° 2, p. 8. - J. Antoine, Exposition de M. J. F. Raffaëlli, in Art et critique, Paris, 7 June 1890, 2nd year, n° 54, p. 365. - G. Geffroy, La Vie artistique, Paris, 1894, p. 207. - M.-L. Desazars de Montgailhard, L'Art paradoxal, in Mémoire de l'Académie des sciences, inscriptions et belles-lettres de Toulouse, Toulouse, 1897, 9e série, tome IX, p. 195. When this oil painting was presented in 1884 on the Avenue de l'Opéra as part of a large exhibition of Raffaëlli's work, it was included in the "Pantomimes" section. This work reflects a moment of life, observed or imagined. It is indeed a realism that expresses the comedy of life, as tragic as it is ridiculous. A small house without floor, with two doors and without window, with only one dormer window in the attic, carrying a sign "for sale", with the cracked plaster, and dated 1851, at the number 7 of an unknown street: such is the decoration of the spectacle. For it is indeed a set that the painter is setting up, with this dwelling framed by other taller constructions, like stage elements intended to mask the backstage. In front of the house, on the sidewalk, which seems to be a stage, a woman, who is trying to drag her child "to the courtyard", makes a fist at a "corseted gossip", according to the description of the 1933 sale, who threatens her with her night vase. A third woman, observing the scene from behind, perhaps frightened, broom in hand, in the doorway "garden side". The somewhat disproportionate size of the woman with the raised fist accentuates the strange character of the scene and the presence of the characters in this setting that is almost too small to be true. Finally, countering the hostility of the humans, a small animal ballet shows the affectionate encounter of two dogs under the gaze of a cat. It is not by chance that this work is listed among the "Pantomimes": it is indeed the gestures that speak to us here.