Civil War

Edouard Manet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

After serving in the National Guard during the Siege of Paris, Manet remained outside the city for most of the Commune but returned to witness the atrocities of its violent suppression in late May 1871. According to his friend Théodore Duret, he based this lithograph on a sketch made from life near the Madeleine Church, the site of one of the first massacres of Communards by Versailles government troops. The dead National Guardsman lying beside the barricade stands for one of many, while the pinstriped pant legs in the right corner refer to additional civilian casualties. Manet’s animated use of the lithographic medium, which included employing the side of the crayon for broad strokes, as well as scratching into the greasy black marks, suggests that the dust has barely settled on this scene.

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