Interpreting the Visual Evidence
Representing the People during the French Revolution
From the moment the
population of Paris
came to the assistance
of the beleaguered National
Assembly in July
1789, representations of "the people" in
the French Revolution took on an overwhelming
significance. Building a new
government that was committed to an
idea of popular sovereignty meant that
both the revolution's supporters and
its opponents were deeply invested in
shaping perceptions of the people. And
of course, Article III of the Declaration
of the Rights of Man ("The principle of
sovereignty resides essentially in the nation")
meant that any individual, group,
or institution that could successfully
claim to represent the will of the people
could wield tremendous power, so long
as others accepted that claim.
Of course, revolutionary crowds did
not always conform to the images of
them that circulated so widely in prints
and paintings during the period 1789–
1799. Some were spontaneous, and others
were organized; some were made up
of recognizable social and professional
groups with clear political goals, and
others were a hodgepodge of conflicting
and even inarticulate aspirations. Many
were nonviolent; some were exceedingly
threatening and murderous. All politicians
sought to use them to support their
political programs, and many learned to
fear their unpredictable behavior.
These four images give a sense of
the competing visions of the people that
appeared in the public realm during the
French Revolution. The first (image A)
shows the killing of Foulon, a royal official
who was lynched and beheaded
by an enthusiastic crowd barely a week
after the fall of the Bastille because he
was suspected of conspiring to starve
the Parisian population as punishment
for their rebellion against the king. The
second (image B) shows a more carefully choreographed representation
of the people during the Festival of
Federation, organized in July 1790 by
the revolutionary government to commemorate
the first anniversary of the
fall of the Bastille. Finally, the last two
documents show contrasting images
of the revolutionary sans-culottes, the
working-class revolutionaries who supported
the government during the Terror
in 1792–1794. The first (image C), a
sympathetic portrait of a sans-culottes
as a virtuous and self-sacrificing working
man, standing with an eye to the future,
seems completely incongruous when
paired with the British satirist James
Gilray's portrait of a cannibalistic sansculottes
family (image D), drawn literally
"without pants," feasting on the bodies
of their victims after a hard day's work.
Images
Questions for Analysis
1. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d Image A depicts an event from July
1789—that is, before the August publication
of the Declaration of the
Rights of Man. How does this image
portray the crowd’s vengeance on
Foulon? What possible political messages
are contained in this image? |
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2. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d Image B, on the other hand, chooses
to display the people celebrating their
own birth as a political body, by convening
on the anniversary of the fall of
the Bastille. What emotions is this
painting designed to invoke and how
is it related to more disturbing images
such as Image A? |
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3. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d How are the positive and negative portrayals
of sans-culottes as political actors
(Images C and D) constructed?
Can one imagine a painting of a worker
like Image C being produced before
1789? What does Image D tell us
about how the revolution was viewed
from Britain? |
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