Rolla, the title of this painting by Henri Gervex, refers to a poem of the same name written by Alfred de Musset in 1833. Faithful to the romantic drama of his favourite author, Gervex depicts the acme of the tragic story: Rolla, an idle bourgeois driven to ruin and the biggest debaucher in Paris, contemplates his sleeping mistress one last time before swallowing the fatal poison to avoid dishonour. The painting illustrates the exact same moment in the poem:
Rolla contemplates with a melancholy eye
The beautiful Marion sleeping in her vast bed;
I know not what horrible and almost diabolical thing
Sent shivers down his spine despite himself.
Marion was not cheap. For a night with her
It had cost him his last penny.
Although the painting was judged to be scandalous, it was not because of the model’s nudity, which conformed to the academic canons of the day, but the pile of women’ clothing in the foreground: petticoat, garter, the hastily unhooked corset, echoed by the lover’s phallic cane and top hat.
Refused by the jury at the 1878 Salon, Gervex’s Rolla was revealed to the curiosity of Parisian passers-by in the window of an art dealers shop in Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin. The public rushed to see the work which was similar to Manet’s Nana which had caused a scandal just a year earlier.
