Misery by Cristóbal Rojas: A pale, lifeless body lies on the bed in a small, dark room. Next to which sits a man as motionless as the dead body, absolutely distraught, struck by the realisation of what has just happened. The man is the husband of the deceased, who could not afford for his wife’s treatment who was suffering from tuberculosis or consumption, a disease that was also known as “the captain of all these men of death.”
Time seems to have stopped inside the room. All the distress and agony in the world seems to have settled on the man’s face, sitting static in grief. The entire disaster is witnessed and captured by his neighbour, Cristóbal Rojas, who gave birth to one of his most famous realist paintings La Miseria (1886) or Misery inspired by this particular moment of tragedy.
Not a Romantic Disease
Misery is not just an absolutely horrifying piece of art because it shows somebody’s suffering raw and cruel, but also because it has a much deeper connection with the artist. A thread connects the two together – a thread that remained in Rojas’ life even after the painting, something he was acquainted with since his childhood, a thread named Tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis, as we know it, is one of the most devastating diseases in history that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives across the world. What few of us know about the disease is that it has existed for millions of years affecting not just human beings but also animals, with its earliest traces being found in early hominids in East Africa over a million years ago.
According to a research done to trace its origin in South America, it was found that the disease was transmitted from seals and sea lions rather than from humans. This study went on to argue whether the arrival of the disease had anything to do with human contact (particularly, contact with the European explorers). In the study, the remnants of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis that were traced in early human skeletons was not the one that was transmitted by the Europeans – controversial, yet fascinating.
Since this disease spreads fast and claims multiple lives at once, it was rampant amongst the poorer population – making the disease regarded as the disease of poverty. The living conditions of a larger part of the population was getting worse as they rapidly contracted the disease with no hope of any cure, it was made to believe in the middle ages that the touch of a royal could cure the disease of the poor as the symptoms like pale skin were considered one of the signs of ‘spiritual purity’as the complexion was said to be ‘clearing’.
This further led to the romanticisation of Tuberculosis. And by the 18th century, it became a sort of trend among the privileged population to show off the sickly pale complexion and loss of weight. Despite the huge number of deaths from this disease, the rich had found a way to establish a new beauty standard out of the misery of the rest of the population.
The Artist, Consumption and Death
Cristóbal Rojas Poleo was born in 1858 in Cúa, Venezuela around the period of Federal War that lasted till 1863 and killed nearly 20,000 people between 1859 to 1860 in a country that had a population of only over 2 million. Hence, Rojas’ early childhood saw a period of struggle and death all around. At the age of 12, Rojas faced his first misery when he lost his father to tuberculosis. Since then, this disease had cast a shadow over his life.
After his father’s death, the entire responsibility of his family fell on his shoulders and he started working in a tobacco factory. Soon after, he was met with another tragedy in 1878 when his home was destroyed in a devastating earthquake.
After having faced so many hardships, he turned to painting in 1880, a skill he had been made familiar with in his childhood by his sculptor grandfather. He explored multiple art styles such as Impressionism, Realism, Post-Romanticism, etc. out of which several paintings explored themes of disease and death. The Sick Violinist (1886) and Primera y Última Comunión (1888) are some of the examples of such paintings that explore the horrors of a slow decay and suffering that is followed by a disease that everyone, every loved one around bears the misfortune of witnessing.
The Horror of Misery
When one first sees the painting Misery by Rojas, their eyes go straight to the face of the man that sits in absolute despair next to his dead wife. The realisation of her death turns him into a stone, sitting still in pain. His one hand is placed lifeless over his thigh and the other is on the bed near his wife that shows he was trying till the very last moment to give her the hope of survival.
Their room is small and the walls are dark and dilapidated that have witnessed every fragment of the couple’s agony and poverty that they give off the impression of having soaked in all of their struggles. The colour of the walls almost gets mixed with the colour of the woman’s face who had turned so pale that she looks like she would ultimately merge into these walls. The blend of grey, green, black and brown gives voice to the destitute of the husband who sits in a silence that is deafening.
The painting went on to have manifested in the life of Rojas, as tuberculosis tightened its grip over his life and consumed him 4 years after he finished this work. After knowing the existence of this disease in his life since he was a child of 12 and witnessing loss for the first time, the viewer tends to look at the man in the painting and see some of Rojas in him.
He was truly aware of what shock and realisation of a loss looks like because he had experienced it well. We cannot help but think of the fact that what pain he had captured of someone else would go on to become the exact way of his suffering. This very fact connects the artist with his art but in a twisted, scary manner.
Rojas passed away in 1890 in his home country at a terribly young age of 32. He ended up facing everything he painted in Misery, as he was forced to return to Venezuela after he ran out of his scholarship money and was being consumed by a disease. And ultimately, the misery of witnessing his death fell on his family. The painting does not just depict mourning of a life succumbed to tuberculosis, but also an example of art morphing itself into one’s own reality.
