Le Bon Samaritain (Morot)

Overview

Le Bon Samaritain (1880) is the large canvas by Aimé Morot (1850-1913) with which he won the medal of honour at the Salon of 1880. It is oil on canvas, 268.5 × 198 cm, in the Petit Palais (Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris), Paris. The Petit Palais describes its debt to Spanish seventeenth-century painting and its sober realism in treating the parable; the canvas was cut down from a larger original to concentrate on the life-size figures. (Sources: Petit Palais, collections page for the painting; Wikipedia, « The Good Samaritan (Morot) »; Commons record of the Petit Palais file.)

Marie and this painting

On 5 May 1880 Marie goes to the Salon: « Le bon Samaritain de Morot est un morceau de peinture épatante. Le Job de Bonnat qui est large, dessiné et bien peint paraît une mièvrerie après le Morot » (088.0105). On 16 May 1880 she goes alone to the Salon early, studies it from a seat opposite with a lorgnette, and declares it « le tableau qui m'a fait le plus complètement plaisir depuis que j'existe » (088.0204, 088.0205); she hurries between it and Bastien-Lepage's Jeanne d'Arc in two neighbouring rooms (088.0208). On 20 June 1880, the last day of the Salon, she notes that it has won the medal of honour -- and, though « la peinture de M. Morot a beau être épatante », she thinks the medal should be harder to win and should not simply go to the best work in the Salon; the picture « m'a presque ennuyée aujourd'hui », while Bastien-Lepage's head of Joan still moves her (089.0005, 089.0006).

Related

Jeanne d'Arc (Bastien-Lepage); the painter's person entry is Morot, which this work entry complements (the person entry already summarises the 1880 diary passages).