If figurative painting is classically seen as an open window on the world, it has frequently been bricked up by pictorial avant-garde movements. Mathieu Mercier plays with the genre in his representation of a fiery setting sun which the artist partly covers in black, like an oil slick caught just as it is destroying the landscape. He also brings up the question of beauty and originality in art by choosing a trivial motif that is widespread in amateur painting.