Day-Hickman: An Interpretive Study of Prints on the French Revolution

My analysis of nine prints from the collection considers the “crowd” as participants in, as well as witnesses to, the major events of the French Revolution. Descriptions of the revolutionary “crowd” in the images from this selection demonstrate the crowd's capacity to endorse or discredit prevailing political forces. That is, artists portray members of the crowd as either the instigators of political action or as objects of opposing ridicule. In many prints, the ideological position of the artist/artisan establishes the interpretive point of view for representations of the revolutionary crowd. Those artists who sympathize with the revolution tend to portray crowd members as heroic agents who embody reason, order, and justice in their efforts to unseat or destroy vestiges from the “old regime.” Such pro-revolutionary artists often incorporate neoclassical elements such as linearity, symmetry as well as seriousness, and decorum to give the composition aesthetic and political credibility. Revolutionary artists also provide architectural solidity, dimension, and weight as background for the unusual rendition of the crowd's participation in politics. In contrast, those artisans at odds with the revolution often portray crowd members as frenzied, mad, and bestial, or as the ludicrous embodiment of revolutionary folly. The reactionary or counter-revolutionary artist thereby lambastes revolutionary figures by locating his characters in outlandish, uncivil, or chaotic situations beyond the pale of civilized order. More specifically, counter-revolutionary artists often try to discredit traditional or symbolic representatives of the revolution through caricature and ridicule.

From popular to high art, imagery about the revolutionary crowd creates a site for critical discourse on many social and cultural levels. The possession and display of visual art was a distinctive mark of prestige for aristocratic or bourgeois customers who could afford to purchase fine paintings, sculpture, and engravings. But in addition to its aesthetic value for elite patrons, visual symbols and narratives about the revolution were particularly important as modes of communication for illiterate to semi-literate groups, unable to decipher abstract texts. For centuries, church hagiography and visual art about Christian saints or local patrons provided models for devotional inspiration to a widespread populace in both urban and rural areas. Concurrently, popular printing houses marketed secular prints, canards, and broadsides geared to inform, entertain, or in some cases, disconcert viewers with tales of imminent or recent disasters. Similarly, Parisian printers produced illustrations and engravings to celebrate and profit from the dramatic representation of major revolutionary events.1 Likewise, anti- or counter-revolutionary factions used visual narratives to establish a critical stance toward those currently ensconced in power. Visual texts then became a way for revolutionary and contending groups to presage, represent, and mimetically “replay” the great historical events of the revolution according to their own political agenda. Consequently, revolutionary engravings and prints functioned not only as “souvenirs” of the revolution but also as the expression and extension of prevailing political conflicts.

Such images, even when anonymous, can provide documentation that suggest the underlying attitudes and beliefs of eighteenth-century contemporaries. While some of the engravings rendered in a so-called “realistic” manner, such as those by Jean-Louis Prieur, seem to be politically nondescript and objective, even these more “schooled” texts convey some socio-political bias. This is not to say that any image proffers an obvious or unequivocal argument. Rather, the visual text is necessarily multivalent and can therefore be read according to differing perspectives and methodologies. Vivian Cameron reveals the importance of addressing the contemporaneous response of art critics to understand meanings embedded in recognized engravings. Wayne Hanley, Lynn Hunt, and Jack Censer advocate the use of inter-textual resources such as newspapers, advertisements, notary and police records, literature, theater, medals, and the international print market to address anonymous as well as identifiable compositions. Joan Landes proposes challenging options for a semiotic study of visual texts based on prevailing cultural and psychosocial meanings. And Warren Roberts, in his discussion of Prieur, presents the richness of definite historical information about the artist, location, and social venue for a comprehensive study of the visual text. In addition to the insights of my colleagues, I would simply underline the importance of pursuing a political frame of reference that can be discerned from the style and perspective of each composition.

More specifically, artists from my selection structure their “positive” or “negative” interpretation of the revolution based on the carnival theme of the “world turned upside down.” This visual theme is taken from Mardi Gras rituals wherein commoners temporarily assume and burlesque the costumes, manners, and authority of the feudal elite.2 For example, in “The Memorable Day at Versailles, 5 October, 1789,” [Image 6] artisans depict a national guardsman and several coquettish mistresses who, during their return to Paris, have replaced the king and his scintillating entourage from Versailles. Other compositions from my selection, such as “Madame Sans-Culotte,” [Image 18] “Pariser Poisarden,” [Image 19] “French Liberty/British Slavery,” [Image 23] and “French Democrats Surprising the Royal Runaways” [Image 9] underscore the monstrous or inverted nature of female and plebeian characters who briefly transgress acceptable gender roles and assume political authority. In the latter prints, the counter-revolutionary artist highlights the malevolent or egregious nature of a revolutionary crowd by inscribing distorted facial expressions, bodily shapes, and seductive positions onto revolutionary proponents who have endeavored to turn their social and political world “upside down” by usurping authority from a traditional political elite.3 The popularity of outdoor burlesque and comic mime in “le théatre forain“ or “le théâter des boulevards” during the eighteenth century could also explain widespread familiarity with the language of mockery apparent in many of the prints.4

1 Warren Roberts, The Public, the Populace, and Images of the French Revolution: Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Louis Prieur, Revolutionary Artists (Albany: State University of New York, 2000) 60, 189: During the revolution, printers engaged in the successful enterprise of reproducing major events of the revolution in elegant engravings for well-heeled customers. The Tableaux historiques de la révolution francaise consisted of some 144 full-page folio prints that covered the period from June, 1789 to Napoleon's coup on November 9, 1799. Prieur, a proponent of the revolution who was later a juror on a revolutionary tribunal, rendered the first 67 prints in the album.

2 Mikail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, translated by Helen Iswolsky (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1984 )10: “As opposed to the official feast, one might say that carnival celebrated temporary liberation from prevailing truth and from established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized and completed.”

3 Peter Stallybrass and Allen White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London: Mathuen, 1986) 16: In their analysis of Bakhtin's discussion of carnival rituals, the authors point out how “Carnivals, fairs, popular games and festivals were very swiftly ‘politicized’ by the very attempts made on the part of local authorities to eliminate them. The dialectic of antagonism frequently turned rituals into resistance at the moment of intervention by higher powers, even when no oppositional element had been present.”

4 For further information on “le théatre forain” (1700-1752) and the French boulevard theaters (1752-1800) see David Trott, Théatre du XVIII siècle: jeux, écritures, regards: essai sur les spectacles en France des 1700 à 1790 (Montpellier: Editions Espaces, 2000), 148-163.