Civil War
1871/73
Medium
Lithograph in black, with scraping, on ivory chine with red and blue fibers laid down on ivory wove paper (chine collé)
Dimensions
Image: 39.8 × 50.7 cm (15 11/16 × 20 in.); Primary support: 40 × 51 cm (15 3/4 × 20 1/8 in.); Secondary support: 49 × 60.9 cm (19 5/16 × 24 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
55507
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Édouard Manet drew on his painting The Dead Toreador (1864; National Gallery of Art) for this print, transforming its context from a morbid twist on a festive Spanish tauromaquia to the crisis in France’s short-lived Second Empire (1852–70). The tumultuous years 1870–71 marked the humiliating defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war, the rise and suppression of the revolutionary Paris Commune, and the dawn of the Third Republic. In this print, an unidentified soldier lies behind a Parisian st...