This is the print from which Manet took the composition of The Barricade in 1871 (on view in this gallery). Its subject occupied the artist for well over a year, resulting in four oil paintings—one of which Degas later owned—and this lithograph. The news of Maximilian’s execution in June 1867 provoked strong indignation against Napoleon III, who had imposed the Austrian archduke as emperor of Mexico and then withdrew the support of French forces in the face of a republican uprising. Manet based his composition on Francisco Goya’s Third of May, 1808 (1814), which he had seen in Madrid two years earlier.
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Jean C. Harris Edouard Manet: Graphic Works, A Definitive Catalogue Raisonné. New York, 1970, cat. no. 54.
Gary Tinterow, Geneviève Lacambre Manet/Velàzquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting. Exh. cat., Musée d'Orsay, Paris, September 16, 2002-January 12, 2003; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, March 4-June 8, 2003. New Haven, CT, 2002, cat. no. 186, ill.
John Elderfield, Museum of Modern Art, New York Manet and the Execution of Maximilian Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York. New York, 2006, fig. no. 41, ill.
Stéphane Guégan, Isolde Pludermacher Manet/Degas. Laurence des Cars, Musée d'Orsay, Gallimard, Paris, 2023, cat. no. 86, pp. 118, 260, ill.
Stephan Wolohojian, Ashley Dunn Manet/Degas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2023, cat. no. 142, pp. 254, 297, ill.
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The Met's collection of drawings and prints—one of the most comprehensive and distinguished of its kind in the world—began with a gift of 670 works from Cornelius Vanderbilt, a Museum trustee, in 1880.
