The Barricade

Edouard Manet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print presents Manet’s response to the French government’s brutal suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871 filtered through the lens of art historical precedents and the artist’s own prior work. Manet borrowed the soldiers who fire upon the Communards from his censored print, "The Execution of Maximilian" (21.48), which referenced the work of Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Through this layering and the explicit depiction of violence, Manet makes clear his condemnation of the government’s actions and, consequently, the print remained unpublished until the year following the artist’s death. Beyond its political critique, the work displays Manet’s lively use of the lithographic medium. He employed the side of the crayon to indicate the brightly lit architecture of the background with broad strokes and reserved areas of the paper to suggest the rifles’ smoke.

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