The Lessons of the Fourth Estate Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum

The picture was purchased in 1920 through public subscription, but its display was banned by the Fascists. In the 1960s and 1970s, "The Fourth Estate" began to enjoy a renewed admiration in progressive circles and has become an icon for political radicals of the class struggle.

It shows an expressly nonviolent march on the part of the peasants or workers -- as differentiated from the other three estates of nobility, church and bourgeoisie.

Pellizza's emphasis falls both on the solidarity of the masses and on their individual humanity and particularity.

Waite's use of this poignant image, a sidelong view of Pellizza's painting and its partial reflection in a mirror, gives us the eternal verity of the moment that cannot be overlaid by subsequent events.

The mirror could not possibly reflect the central protagonists directly to where the viewer notionally stands; yet a time-honored function of the mirror in Western painting is to present the truth undistorted.

So, Waite argues, while the museum absorbs and aestheticizes Pellizza's clamorous voice, taming its revolutionary fervor, "The Lessons of the Fourth Estate" breaks through even the dustiest storehouse to which history has consigned it.

- Patrick McCaughey
from the book "The Spirit of Genius",
Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum