1880
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Lazarillo de Tormes and His Blind Master is a 1880 unspecified by Augustin Théodule Ribot, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A boy in rags crouches beside a blind man, sipping wine from a jug through a straw. The room is dark, lit only by a single candle. This scene comes from a 16th-century Spanish novel about a servant boy who outsmarts his cruel master. French artists in the 1800s loved these gritty, realistic stories—it was called *espagnolisme*. Ribot paints the moment with rough, visible brushstrokes, making the scene feel raw and immediate. To see how other artists handled everyday struggles, look up *chiaroscuro*.
The subject of this painting comes from the 16th-century Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes . This tells the story of Lazarillo, a poor servant boy who worked for an impoverished blind man. Abused by his master, and never given enough to eat or drink, Lazarillo is forced to fend for himself. According to the story, he steals wine by drinking it from a straw directly from the blind man's jug. This painting relates to a cultural movement known as espagnolisme , the French interest in Spanish art and literature. Especially popular during the 1850s, espagnolisme focused upon realistic, often…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Théodule-Augustin Ribot (French: ; August 8, 1823 – September 11, 1891) was a French realist painter and printmaker.
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