Civil War

1871·Lithograph in black, with scraping, on ivory chine with red and blue fibers laid down on ivory wove paper (chine collé)·Image: 39.8 × 50.7 cm (15 11/16 × 20 in.); Primary support: 40 × 51 cm (15 3/4 × 20 1/8 in.); Secondary support: 49 × 60.9 cm (19 5/16 × 24 in.)

Édouard Manet drew on his painting The Dead Toreador (1864; National Gallery of Art) for this print, transforming its context from a morbid twist on a festive Spanish tauromaquia to the crisis in France’s short-lived Second Empire (1852–70). The tumultuous years 1870–71 marked the humiliating defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war, the rise and suppression of the revolutionary Paris Commune, and the dawn of the Third Republic. In this print, an unidentified soldier lies behind a Parisian street barricade. A glimpse of a pin-striped civilian pant leg at the lower right hints at the encroachment of violence on everyday life.

Catalogue

Year: 1871
Medium: Lithograph in black, with scraping, on ivory chine with red and blue fibers laid down on ivory wove paper (chine collé)
Dimensions: Image: 39.8 × 50.7 cm (15 11/16 × 20 in.); Primary support: 40 × 51 cm (15 3/4 × 20 1/8 in.); Secondary support: 49 × 60.9 cm (19 5/16 × 24 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Édouard Manet

Artist

Édouard Manet

Painting

Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

Paris, France

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