Les Communeux: Types, Caractères, Costumes

Charles-Albert Arnoux Bertall

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

First published in 1871, Bertall’s illustrations of types of the Commune was popular enough to be printed in a third edition by 1880. An English translation of 1873 asserted that the album is the "visual textbook" of the Paris Commune. This page shows two of the pétroleuses, or female arsonists, accused of setting fire to several government buildings during the Commune’s bloody last week. The pétroleuse emerged as a mythic type and a scapegoat, whose role in the Commune was exaggerated in reaction to the threat posed by women’s empowerment during the conflict.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art