Reproductie van een schilderij van een slangenbezweerder door Etienne Dinet before 1901

This is an anonymous reproduction of a painting by Etienne Dinet of a snake charmer; I can’t tell what it was made with. It’s printed in monochrome, so the only color is in the tonal range, the deep blacks and pale greys, which makes the image look like a drawing, or perhaps an old photograph. I find myself wondering what kind of surface the original has - is the paint built up, or scraped back? You can’t tell from here! The man himself is very upright, very clear, the focus of the image; look at the light on his gown, it gives him substance. But the figures behind him, in the crowd, are much more vaguely defined. Look at the way the artist has suggested the crowd, the sense of a mass of people gathered together, but without really defining them. There’s something of Delacroix in the way Dinet composes the scene and evokes a specific place through its people. What is clear is the artist’s interest in representing culture, the work creates a document of a time and place through an image of people interacting.