When Paul Cézanne submitted Les Voleurs et l'âne to the 1870 Salon, he did so under the shadow of controversy: the jury had already rejected several of his works, and this painting—depicting a fable with rough, almost violent brushwork—was met with bewilderment. The subject, drawn from the tales of Jean de La Fontaine, was familiar to the French public, but Cézanne’s raw, unpolished style was not. Critics at the time called his approach "brutal," a word that would haunt his early career.

The painting’s fate at the Salon reflected the artist’s struggle for acceptance, as it was quickly dismissed by the academic establishment. The moment Cézanne chose is the climax of La Fontaine’s fable: two thieves quarrel over a stolen donkey, so intent on their dispute that they fail to notice a third party absconding with the animal. In the painting, the two men’s bodies twist in confrontation, their hands gesturing in accusation and desperation, while the donkey—rendered with a rough, almost caricatured solidity—stands between them. The landscape is stark, with slashes of color suggesting rocky ground and a turbulent sky, heightening the sense of chaos and folly.

Unlike Honoré Daumier, who treated similar moral tales with satirical gentleness, Cézanne’s version is harsher, his figures nearly sculpted from paint, their folly exposed without mercy. The precise medium of Les Voleurs et l'âne is not documented, but its bold handling suggests oil. The painting’s early history is obscure; it was likely kept by the artist, as many of Cézanne’s works from this period remained unsold and in his possession for years. Today, it stands as a rare example of his engagement with narrative and satire before his turn to the still lifes and landscapes that would define his mature style.

The work’s rough energy and disregard for academic polish mark it as a harbinger of Post-Impressionism, the movement Cézanne would help to shape, even as he struggled for recognition in his own time.