Sentenced for Life

In this fine painting, Forain deftly sketched the last scene in a trial, using a palette largely limited to black, brown, and a few strategically placed touches of white. At center, the defendant, who has just escaped the death penalty by being sentenced to life imprisonment, bends in a gesture of abject gratitude to kiss the hand of his lawyer. The lawyer, who is the focus of Forain's satire, is shown swelling with self-importance and pride, completely oblivious to the tragedy that has befallen his client and his family. Raising his head high with a smug, self-satisfied expression, he is juxtaposed to the figure on the far right, who, barely visible both to us and to the justice system, buries her head as she weeps into a handkerchief. Presumably a relative or perhaps even the wife of the condemned man, she stands for the many unsung victims of so-called justice.

In contrast to the lawyer, the guard seems to show some sympathy for the condemned man, perhaps because he is also an ordinary man without the self-serving pretensions often associated with the administrators of justice. As the guard hovers above the accused, he extends his arm over his shoulders in a complex gesture that is both a reminder that the man must follow him soon to prison and an expression of comfort and human solidarity. In this incisive piece of social commentary, Forain revealed all the ironies and hollowness of a system that dispenses justice without compassion.

—Entry, Margherita Andreotti, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, The Joseph Winterbotham Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago (1994), p. 140-141.