This painting is a reduced-size replica of Les Tireurs d’arc (The Archers), a painting exhibited in the 1875 Salon under the number 1608.

The work was Pelez’s first contribution to the Salon after his studies in Cabanel’s studio, and it received a favourable reception from the State. It was purchased and sent to Vichy (and is currently displayed on the main staircase of the City Hall). The replica painted two years later was probably intended for a private collector who was won over by this fantastical antiquity.

Pelez's approach to this painting focusses on the human figures, and the question of landscape is resolved by a simple stone wall surmounted by a strip of blue sky. Here, the artist already demonstrates his obsessive fascination for young bodies. His young models strike poses based on famous sculptures: the sitting child is reminiscent of the Nymph with a shell from the Louvre Museum; the standing archer brings to mind the Child with grapes by David d’Angers, a marble sculpture exhibited in the 1845 Salon which became known through an engraving and castings.

The Petit Palais, which had received a significant collection of Pelez’s works upon the death of the painter, had no paintings from the 1870s, a period during which the artist faithfully followed the teachings of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts before the rise of Realism in the 1880s.

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City of Paris municipal collection's website

City of Paris municipal collection's website

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