Civil War

Edouard Manet French
 Publisher Lemercier & Cie. French
 Printer Lemercier & Cie. French

Not on view

Manet left Paris following the Siege, and it is unclear whether he returned in time to witness firsthand the violent suppression of the Commune in late May 1871. On June 5, Madame Morisot wrote to her daughter Berthe that Berthe’s brother had bumped into “two Communards, at this moment when they are all being shot . . . Manet and Degas!” According to his friend Théodore Duret, Manet based this lithograph on a sketch made from life near the church of the Madeleine, the site of one of the first massacres of the revolutionary Communards by Versailles government troops. Degas acquired an impression of this print at Manet’s estate sale.

Civil War, Edouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris), Lithograph on chine collé; second state of two

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