The Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 (Prise de la Bastille le 14 juillet 1789)

Charles Thévenin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The ambitious scale of this etching representing the storming of the Bastille is all the more remarkable considering that it is Thévenin’s only known print. It reprises his painting of the same subject, which he exhibited at the Salon of 1793. The artist deftly leads the eye through the composition with a brilliant use of light and shadow. He emphasizes the violence and bloodshed of this early revolutionary event with the dead and dying appearing prominently in the foreground. At the center, he shows the arrest of the Marquis Bernard-René Jordan de Launay, governor of the Bastille. The soldier rushing in from the right waving the flag of surrender makes clear that this moment marks a decisive turning point toward victory for the insurgents.

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