The Daughter of Jairius 1863

Carl Bloch’s painting, *The Daughter of Jairius*, was made using oil on canvas, a common choice for academic painting of the 19th century. Though the subject is miraculous, the painting is mostly concerned with the textures of the material world. Bloch renders the scene with careful attention to the play of light on the mother's veil, the rumpled bedsheets, and the faces of the gathered figures. The artist has used the smooth quality of the oil paint to give a fine-grained realism to the whole scene. We might reflect on the contrast between the smooth, controlled brushwork used here, and the raw, visceral reality of death, labor, and belief. Oil paint was of course commercially produced at this time, so the artist was able to purchase tubes of pigment made by someone else. In a very real sense, the painting incorporates not only the artist's own labor, but also the labor of those who prepared his materials. Bloch shows us that even the most refined paintings are rooted in the everyday world of materials, making, and social relations.