Ferdinand HEILBUTH
(1826–1889)

THE PAWNBROKER’S SHOP

1861
Oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon
Inv. no. 1620

Heilbuth’s work was the direct forebear for Munkácsy’s. The German artist Ferdinand Heilbuth showed his work The Pawnbroker’s Shop at the 1861 Salon, from where it was purchased for the Musée du Luxembourg, a museum dedicated to living artists. After moving to Paris, Munkácsy regularly visited the city’s museums, thus he could easily have seen the painting. Prints of the work were also widely known. Although the neutral, almost monochrome background in Heilbuth’s work is bare to the extreme, while in Munkácsy’s the background is composite and elaborate, the two paintings have a very similar composition. The inscription “engagements” features on the right-hand side of both paintings, above the window where the pawned items are being handed over. Certain figures – the man in the top hat, the woman with a baby and young child, the more elegantly dressed woman – can be found in both works. There is a static, snapshot-like quality to the paintings.