Grand'Garde (Souvenir of the Siege of Paris)

James Tissot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tissot enlisted in the National Guard to defend the city of Paris during the Prussian siege in 1870. This is one of a series of six etchings he produced later in the decade, all subtitled "Souvenir du Siege de Paris" and based on drawings he made during the conflict. Thomas Gibson Bowles, the editor of "Vanity Fair," based a wood engraved illustration for his book, "The Defense of Paris: Narrated As It Was Seen" (1871) on the same now-lost drawing.

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