The Beggars

The Beggars from 1849 belongs to a recurring preoccupation in Decamps's work with marginal figures — street children, wandering goatherds, unemployed laborers — rendered with the dignity that official Salon painting typically reserved for mythological or historical subjects. Painted on panel, the work reflects his preference for small-scale formats when treating intimate social subjects, allowing a directness of address that large canvases discouraged. By 1849, revolutionary upheaval had recently shaken France, and images of poverty carried new social urgency. Decamps's beggars, however, transcend polemical intent: they are painted as human beings of intrinsic interest, observed without pity or condescension. The National Galleries Scotland holds this panel as part of its collection of French Romantic painting, where it stands among the finest examples of Decamps's compassionate humanism.

The panel support enabled the fine-grained detail Decamps required for the figures' worn clothing and weather-marked faces. His warm underlayer glows through the thinly painted skin tones, lending the figures physical warmth that counters the bleakness of their circumstances.