It could be an early scene in a monster movie. In fact, it’s an image of the French Revolution. This article, The Revolutionary Colossus, was originally published in The Public Domain Review under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. If you wish to reuse it please see: https://publicdomainreview.org/legal/ As the French Revolution entered its most radical years, there[…]
The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, established in 1648 oversaw – and held a monopoly over – the arts in France until 1793. Introduction In a room filled to the brim with painting and sculpture, well-dressed men in powdered wigs assemble around a desk while stragglers chat with their neighbors. Jean-Baptiste Martin’s small painting[…]
On the morning of 18 Brumaire, Lucien Bonaparte falsely persuaded the Councils that a Jacobin coup was at hand in Paris. Introduction The Coup of 18 Brumaire brought General Napoleon Bonaparte to power as First Consul of France and in the view of most historians ended the French Revolution. This bloodless coup d’état overthrew the[…]
After the revolution, one of the ways the French government seized assets, property, and art collections. Introduction The Louvre Museum opened its doors on August 10, 1793 as the Muséum Français, allowing the French public unfettered access to the new national art collection. Paintings, bronze sculptures, marble tables and statues, porcelain, and other “curiosities” had[…]
People had become less and less likely to lend much credibility to witness testimony. One lazy afternoon in 1769, a heartfelt reunion between an incredulous young man and his former tutor led to a polite discussion regarding the possibility of miracles. After having expressed his disappointment that the young man had fallen prey to the[…]
The Exchange of Arrows Between Death and Cupid, ca. 1665–1701, Pierre Landry (publisher). Engraving. The Getty Research Institute, 2012.PR.102 By Courtney Wilder / 02.14.2013 “Hide your heart from sight, Lock your dreams at night, It could happen to you.” While the presumably dreadful “it” referred to in the opening verse of “It Could Happen to[…]
Set of Post Stamps “Kyivan Princesses on European Thrones”, Ukraine’s Postal Service, 2016 She was an influential advisor to both her husband and her son, inscribing many royal documents with her own name, and introducing the name Philip into the royal line. By Dr. Christian Raffensperger / 06.2017 Associate Professor of Pre-Modern and Ancient World Studies[…]
This image shows the machine works of Richard Hartmann in Chemnitz, Germany. Hartmann was one of the most successful entrepreneurs and largest employers in the Kingdom of Saxony. / Hinweise zur lizenzgerechten Weiterverwendung des Bildes, Wikimedia Commons The greater portion of mobility occurred within or between regions as people relocated their labor, material wealth, and cultural notions. By Leslie Page[…]
Paris Gay Pride 1982 A selection of four films from the years of gay liberation from the 1970s and 1980s in France. 02.14.2017 Introduction How liberating was gay liberation in France? A selection of four films from the years of gay liberation from the 1970s and 1980s can show us how gay men were becoming[…]
The Wanderings of a Comet, from Another World, 1844 / Internet Archive With its dreamlike inversions and kaleidoscopic cast of anthropomorphic objects, animals, and plants, the world of French artist J. J. Grandville is at once both delightful and disquieting. Patricia Mainardi explores the unique work of this 19th-century illustrator now recognised as a major precursor[…]
Portrait of Edgar Quinet by Sebastien-Melchior Cornu / National Portrait Gallery Examining the connections Quinet made between the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution. By Dr. Bryan Banks Assistant Professor of Early Modern and Modern European History, Comparative Revolutions, and Religious Studies Columbus State University Historians have explained the origins of the French Revolution in[…]
Liberty leads the people / Wikimedia Commons Exploring the artistic expressions of the French Revolution. Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 09.23.2018 Historian Brewminate Editor-in-Chief Réunion des Trois Ordres (Reunion of the Three Estates), 1789 Etching with hand-colouring / Publisher Unrecorded This print is in fact a combination of three etchings produced separately during the[…]
Marianne is the embodiment of the French Republic. Marianne represents the permanent values that found her citizens’ attachment to the Republic: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. Employed alternately by opponents of the republican system and by its defenders, the name Marianne (Marie-Anne), popular with the working classes, is the symbol of a Republic constructed by the gradual[…]
The ‘French disease’ erupted in Europe in 1495, reaching Scotland in 1497 and Russia in 1499. By Dr. Mona O’Brien / 03.22.2016 Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar University of Glasgow My very dear friends turned their backs on me as if some pursuing enemy had his sword at their throats, without giving a single thought to[…]
The start of the 19th century was a time of hostility between France and England, marked by a series of wars. Throughout this period, England feared a French invasion led by Napoleon. Ruth Mather explores the impact of this fear on literature and on everyday life. By Dr. Ruth Mather Postdoctoral Research Associate University of Exeter[…]
1789 Engraving, James Gillray / Public Domain Considering how Britain’s intellectual, political and creative circles responded to the French Revolution. By Dr. Ruth Mather Postdoctoral Research Associate University of Exeter Intellectual debate A New Patriotic Song, from a collection of material relating to the fear of a French invasion: This ballad sheet from 1803 typically demonstrates publications[…]
Creative Commons Photo The tenacity of the Commune’s second life does not simply attest to its continuing usefulness in American culture for making sense of revolutions past and future: it also crucially reverses the assumption that transnational circuits of memory—that memory without borders, as it were—are uniquely or definitively a product of our own hyper-mediated historical moment.[…]
The archives of American artistic production, letters, journals, and their contemporary circles in France can be brought into dialogue with published primary sources. By Emily Burns Research on American artists studying in France has tended to represent three modes of inquiry. Some scholars have recounted the details of art study in the École des Beaux-Arts[…]
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte III Rarely in history has a country so blindly, maliciously and relentlessly turned against the memory of one of its national leaders in blatant defiance of the historical facts. By Dr. Alan Strauss-Schom / 07.08.2018 Historian Rarely in history has a country so blindly, maliciously and relentlessly turned against the memory of[…]
Scenes of July 1830, a painting by Léon Cogniet alluding to the July revolution of 1830 / Wikimedia Commons Similar to the earlier revolution in 1789 and the subsequent one in 1848, the revolutionary upheaval in Paris in July 1830 served as a signal for further revolutionary movements in other countries. By Dr. Julia A. Schmidt-Funke / 08.16.2017[…]
Medieval teaching scene. gallica.bnf.fr / BnF Back in the Middle Ages, as well as speaking English and Latin, many people living inBritain also spoke French. By Dr. Huw Grange / 03.16.2018 Junior Research Fellow in French Jesus College University of Oxford The study of modern languages in British secondary schools is in steep decline. The number of students taking French and German GCSE[…]
Detail from depiction of a Formosan funeral, featured in George Psalmanazar’s An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704) — Internet Archive The remarkable story of George Psalmanazar, the mysterious Frenchman who successfully posed as a native of Formosa (now modern Taiwan) and gave birth to a meticulously fabricated culture with bizarre customs, exotic fashions, and its own[…]
“We should make sure that the revolution is transmitted!” / CC-BY-NC 2.0 doc(q)man By Dr. Frederick C. Schneid / 01.27.2011 Herman and Louise Smith Professor of History High Point University Abstract The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars represented continuity in European diplomacy from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, but witnessed considerable change in the way that[…]
Departure of the Conscripts in 1807, by Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1808 / Musée Carnavalet via Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Ambrogio Caiani / 12.03.2010 Senior Lecturer in History University of Kent Introduction When faced, in 1793, with the prospect of defeat, the National Convention issued an appeal for a levée en masse, which, theoretically, placed the entire population at[…]
Queen Marie-Antoinette, about 1789, Pierre-Michel Alix after Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun. Etching and wash manner, printed in blue, red, yellow, and black inks, 9 3/16 x 7 1/16 in. The National Gallery of Art, Widener Collection, 1942.9.2. Image courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington By Philippe Halbert / 06.07.2015 Graduate Student in Art History (American and European[…]
Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, Jacques-Louis David, 1804. Oil on canvas, 23 2/4 x 19 1/2 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 97.PA.36 By Lindsey Ward / 08.30.2010 Jacques-Louis David was as political an artist as ever lived. He was a leader of the French Revolution, a prominent member of the radical Jacobin party, and a close[…]
Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat, 1793, oil on canvas, 165 x 64.96 cm (Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium) By Dr. Claire McCoy / 06.09.2015 William B. and Sue Marie Turner Distinguished Faculty Chair in Art History Columbus State University In the decades following the French Revolution and Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo (1815) a[…]
Sainte-Cecile Cathedral overlooking the Tarn River, Albi, France. Midi- Pyrénées / Encyclopedia Britannica By Dr. Friedrich Edelmayer / 05.31.2012 Professor of Austrian and Medieval History Universität Wien Abstract The Pyrenees region encompasses areas from the Kingdom of Spain, the Republic of France and the Principality of Andorra. It is also linguistically heterogeneous. In addition to[…]
Etruscan and Massalian amphorae excavated at Lattes, France. Photo: Michael Dietler A look at wine’s integral role in culture and colonialism in ancient France. By Dr. Michael Dietler / 06.29.2015 Professor of Anthropology University of Chicago I couldn’t resist the pun. In 47 B.C. dictator Julius Caesar sent a famous communiqué to Rome summing up his latest achievement:[…]
Writing table, about 1670–75, French. Oak veneered with ivory, blue-painted horn, ebony, rosewood, and amaranth, with drawer of walnut; gilt-bronze moldings; brass; iron; and modern velvet, 25 in. high. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 83.DA.21 A rare ivory table is an example of Louis XIV’s avant-garde taste. By Philippe Halbert / 06.07.2015 Graduate Student in[…]