The rustic painting of Théodule Ribot in the spotlight in Toulouse
The Musée des Augustins presents a retrospective of this realistic artist, portraitist of the little people against a background of darkness. No spirit of rebellion, but a taste for simplicity.
With Théodule Ribot (1823-1891), which the association of three regional museums consecrates with a retrospective, noir c’est noir. But these dark backgrounds which characterize this painter have a positive but: focused the light on the little people, to tell the genius, that of their places, their objects. Here then, first in Toulouse before Marseille and Caen, on beautiful coal or slate-colored picture rails occupying the choir of the old Augustins church (the only open part of a museum under construction and which will not reopen until 2023) , 80 tables. So many visions of a magnified modest daily life. Because if in his oils, places all over France like other European countries or North America, Ribot spins the strict realism advocated by Courbet – his socializing message excepted – it is to exhale an attractive humanist fragrance. .
Irreducible to the labels of time (neither really academic nor impressionist), the artist has been rediscovered in recent years by the art historian