Soldier with a woman on his arm
mid–19th century
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
Mount: 12 x 17 7/8 in. (30.5 x 45.4 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Dr. Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher, 2012
Accession Number
2012.401.3a
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the mid-19th century, French artist Victor Adam captured the everyday camaraderie of military life in his lithograph *Soldier with a Woman His Arm*. Adam, known for his lively depictions of soldiers in relaxed, humanizing moments, created this print during a time when France's military legacy—from Napoleonic triumphs to contemporary conflicts like the Crimean War—ueled public fascination with uniformed figures. Rather than glorifying battle, the work portrays a soldier escorting a woman, evoking themes of romance, leisure, and social bonds amid the era's rigid class structures. Lithography...
About the Artist
Victor Adam · 1801–1866
Victor Adam was born in Paris in 1801 and built a prolific and commercially successful career as one of the leading lithographers and illustrators of nineteenth-century France. He received a conventional academic training in painting, but it was the new medium of lithography — still in its first decades of widespread use when Adam came of age — that provided the ideal vehicle for his gifts: a faci...