The Spanking by Paul Charles Chocarne Moreau

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Among Paul Moreau’s many paintings about Parisian boys conducting pranks on their friends, this one captures our eyes by its distinguish-ness from the rest. In general, the kids in his paintings would do something with secrecy, so the victim wouldn’t even know what is going on behind his back or would acknowledge much later. The fun part would be more about sneaking things away or fooling someone.

Though, the current scene is a direct decree of punishment to one of the gang-members. The reason of the punishment (spanking) couldn’t be defined clearly. Various reasons could occur if we start to guess. But, all in all, the culprit has been declared to have some punishment and he also has accepted it as he is reluctantly ready to get punished.

The more interesting part is that, everybody else is having their best time. They are very much pleased to see their friend get spanked on his back as if they were waiting for this day to come.

Paul Moreau’s eye for the details could be perceived in his depiction of the rotten poster on the door left hand side and very much different expression of the kids for the same scene. The different expressions automatically show the glimpse of those kids’ own personalities and minds and what they are thinking about the situation. Two boys on the left are looking at the basket of food. Illicit stealing of extra food could be the reason of the punishment.

This oil on canvas is really big with dimension of around 9 by 7 feet and is currently resting in private collection.