Jan Stobbaerts, Slaughterhouse

by Atelier Liesjes

In a tiled slaughterhouse, a black cow hangs from ropes attached to the ceiling via a pulley. The animal is seen from the side, its head turned to the left, its legs just above the floor. A man in a green shirt and dark trousers is crouching by the hind legs; he has his hands on the knee joints and is looking intently at his work. On the other side stands a woman in a grey apron and a dark skirt; she is holding the horns with both hands and looking over the animal’s back, straight at the viewer. To the right stands a wooden table with a knife; a saucepan hangs on the wall, whilst a basin and a bucket stand on the red tiles. The light falls diagonally across the stones, casting the shadow of the rope.
Stobbaerts painted this work as an ‘esquise’, a quick study: in the bottom right-hand corner, he notes this designation alongside his signature. The paint is thin and sparse in places; the edges of the figures are soft, and the background is barely worked out. The palette remains earthy and warm: reddish-brown, ochre, grey-green and blackish-brown, with the creamy white of the man’s shirt as the sole bright note. The scene is by no means heroic, but it possesses the gravity of labour that goes unseen by the public. It is precisely this unadorned perspective that makes the work special.
Jan Stobbaerts (Antwerp 1838 – Antwerp 1914) drew his subjects from the slaughterhouses and cattle markets of Antwerp, where he used to wander as a young painter. He is regarded as part of the Belgian Realist movement and was appreciated for his direct, unvarnished depiction of animals and farm life. As well as oil paintings, he produced etchings on the same subjects. A sober, powerful work for an interior where one wishes to hang an authentic piece of art on the wall.