Image 1. Motion faite au Palais royal, par Camille Desmoulins. Le 12 Juillet 1789. [Speech in the Garden of the Palais Royal, July 12, 1789]

Within this sub-category of images then, how were violence and the crowd configured by image-makers during the French Revolution?2  While the representational strategies employed by the artists can quickly be summarized, of equal importance are the types of violence displayed.  In these pictorial constructions of specific events, the images depicting violence and the crowd vary greatly in the portrayal of figures, actions, settings, ancillary details, and the like.  A number of the images, such as those executed by the talented printmaker Pierre-Gabriel Berthault, after drawings by Jean-Louis Prieur, for a series entitled Les Tableaux historiques de la Révolution française [Images 1, 8, 25 and 26], provide a panoramic sweep of a scene with precise renderings of architecture, architectural ornamentation, clothing, weapons, vehicles, and the like.3  The words in the series’ title “Tableaux historiques,” historical pictures, play on those of the highest ranking category of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, namely, history painting (“peinture historique”) while the multiple details of everyday life within the prints connect them to another, very different academic category, genre painting.  Other image-makers, working in a more popular style,4 often more rustic and naive, produced illustrations either issued separately or for various publications; they also depicted panoramic views of a scene, as was the case in most of the illustrations of the taking of the Bastille [Images 3 and 13].5

	Image 29. Prise de la Bastille, le 14 Juillet 1789 [Seizure of the Bastille, July 14, 1789]

Another visual strategy is that which I would call centripetal focus on figural action, where the space allotted the setting is constricted and the focus is on principal actors, as in Thévenin’s Prise de la Bastille [Image 29], Le Supplice du Sieur Foulon [Image 2], or the anonymous Les Derniers moments de Louis XVI [Image 15].  In these works, the viewer is positioned close to the figures operating within the pictorial space, a strategy used by both the amateur artist of Le Supplice du Sieur Foulon and the other more technically accomplished image-makers.  Significantly, whatever representational strategy is employed, the artist could be pro-revolutionary like Thévenin or royalist like the print-maker who executed Les Derniers moments de Louis XVI.6

Image 5. Le Quatrième Événement du Octubre 1789 [The Fourth Incident of October 5, 1789]

The third category, encompassing serial imagery, could be labeled episodic.  Major and minor events are broken up into more minute incidents.  Both setting and figures are more general than in the previous two categories.  Included here would be the aquatints of the autodidactic artist, J.P. Janinet, such as Le Quatrième Evenement du Octobre 1789 [Image 5] or the anonymous illustrations for the newspaper, Les Révolutions de Paris, e.g., Les Massacres des prisonniers [Image 12].7  Janinet’s prints were amalgamated in a book entitled Gravures historiques des principaux événements depuis l’ouverture des Etats-Géneraux de 1789, with each image accompanied by a text of four pages.  The fall of the Bastille, for instance, which was divided into six incidents, offered a more complete visual narration of the events of July 14, 1789.8

	Image 6. Journée mémorable de Versailles, le lundi 5 Octobre 1789. [Memorable Day at Versailles, October 5, 1789]

Fourthly, an artist might choose to minimize or eliminate the background and arrange the figures across the page in a frieze, as was done in the two prints entitled Journéé mémorable de Versailles [Images 6 and 7] and that entitled Le Retour triomphant des Héroïnes françaises de Versailles à Paris le 6 Octobre 1789 [Image 32], relying on the inscription to identify the event.

In employing these representational strategies, what types of violence did the artists depict?   First, what was the eighteenth-century understanding of the word “violence”?  Turning to the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française (1786), we find a wide range of definitions that are far more nuanced than we might expect, but for the purposes of analyzing the imagery selected here, the following will suffice:

Violence signifies...the force one uses against common rights, against the laws, against public liberty. To use violence.  To act with violence. He has taken my furniture, my papers, and has carried them off with violence, by violence.  To do violence.  What violence!  Do violence against someone. [Violence, signifie ... La force dont on use contre le droit commun, contre les Lois, contre la liberté publique.  User de violence.  Agir avec violence.  Il a pris mes meubles, mes papiers, & les a emportés de violence, par violence.  Faire des violences.  Quelle violence!  Faire violence à quelqu’un.]9

As characterized here, violence could be associated with actions (“to use violence” and “to act with violence”), with property (“my furniture, my papers”), with people (“do violence against someone”), as well as activities “against the laws.”  But at the end of the definition of “violent,”  the idea of “against the laws” is almost turned on its head:

Violent is said also of persons, sentiments and actions. A violent man. A violent mood. A violent action.  A violent discourse.  Violent passion.  Violent and tyrannical government. [Violent, se dit aussi Des personnes, des sentimens & des actions. Un homme violent.  Une humeur violente.  Une action violente.  Un discours violent.  Passion violente.  Gouvernement violent & tyrannique.]10

Associated with people, actions, and sentiments, violence is here linked to the body that creates laws, the government itself, a government that acts with force and—can one say?—against the law.  In summary, then, violence is also about people or government acting with force, strong feelings, impetuosity, and is associated with a broad range of activities, which was portrayed in a number of the selected images.

The types of violence portrayed can be placed in five categories: symbolic violence; participatory violence; complicit violence; anticipatory violence; and ritualized violence, and can be best defined through illustrative examples. It should be noted, however, that the categories are by no means mutually exclusive, that an image might depict a single type of violence while another might deliberately portray several types simultaneously.  What follows are analyses of sample images that fall within each category.

Notes