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François Bocion trained under Charles Gleyre in Paris, trying his hand at history painting on his return to Lausanne where he worked for the rest of his career. His major works in the genre are La Dispute religieuse de Lausanne (The Lausanne Disputation, 1857, also in the MCBA collection), commissioned by the State of Vaud, and La Bataille de Morgarten (The Battle of Morgarten, 1859, Museum of Art and History, Fribourg), painted for a competition held by the Society for the Advancement of the Arts in Geneva. He spent less time on this smaller piece illustrating a famous episode in Lausanne’s history, the Bourla-Papey insurrection.
The movement took its name from the local patois term meaning “paper-burner” when, in 1802, local peasants destroyed the feudal titles to many chateaux and mansions. The tents on the left of the composition indicate that the scene probably depicts the insurgent camp set up in May 1802 by the banks of the Venoge. On the right are the group of Bourla-Papey, recognisable from their white gaiters and the papers speared on their weapons. The central figures may be negotiating an agreement between their leaders, including the seditious journalist Louis Reymond, and the Swiss government official Bernhard Friedrich Kuhn.
It is hard to tell whether this work, which seems to be a study, was laying the groundwork for a more ambitious painting. As far as we know, it was not shown during Bocion’s lifetime. It was displayed alongside the Disputation in the Bocion room inaugurated in the Musée Arlaud in 1892, attracting critics including Charles Koëlla, who wrote that while Bocion seemed to have settled definitively on landscapes, “it is not because he could not have succeeded in another genre”.
Bibliography
Charles Koëlla, Gazette de Lausanne, 16.6.1892: 3.
François Bocion trained under Charles Gleyre in Paris, trying his hand at history painting on his return to Lausanne where he worked for the rest of his career. His major works in the genre are La Dispute religieuse de Lausanne (The Lausanne Disputation, 1857, also in the MCBA collection), commissioned by the State of Vaud, and La Bataille de Morgarten (The Battle of Morgarten, 1859, Museum of Art and History, Fribourg), painted for a competition held by the Society for the Advancement of the Arts in Geneva. He spent less time on this smaller piece illustrating a famous episode in Lausanne’s history, the Bourla-Papey insurrection.
The movement took its name from the local patois term meaning “paper-burner” when, in 1802, local peasants destroyed the feudal titles to many chateaux and mansions. The tents on the left of the composition indicate that the scene probably depicts the insurgent camp set up in May 1802 by the banks of the Venoge. On the right are the group of Bourla-Papey, recognisable from their white gaiters and the papers speared on their weapons. The central figures may be negotiating an agreement between their leaders, including the seditious journalist Louis Reymond, and the Swiss government official Bernhard Friedrich Kuhn.
It is hard to tell whether this work, which seems to be a study, was laying the groundwork for a more ambitious painting. As far as we know, it was not shown during Bocion’s lifetime. It was displayed alongside the Disputation in the Bocion room inaugurated in the Musée Arlaud in 1892, attracting critics including Charles Koëlla, who wrote that while Bocion seemed to have settled definitively on landscapes, “it is not because he could not have succeeded in another genre”.