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4. Is there anything left to discover about the crowd in the French Revolution? Can we contribute to the issues raised by Rude, Soboul, and Andrews over the last 30 years? Is the crowd a new topic for representation in late eighteenth-century France, and if so, why is that important?

I have nothing to add to Barbara's fine reading of Prieur's “Hanging of Foulon,” which brings out most effectively the disengagement that attends the image. This is in striking contrast, I feel, to Prieur's “Intendant Bertier de Sauvigny,” which is the sequel to his “Hanging of Foulon.” Here, in the sequel, the perspective is up-close; the macabre scene is viewed at street level; the violence is, so to speak, in your face. In the “Hanging of Foulon” image we see a crowd lynching a hated official at a distance; the viewer actually has to look carefully at the image, to scrutinize it, to know what is happening. This is in contrast to the “Intendant Bertier de Sauvigny” image, in which the decapitated head of Foulon is in the center of the work, with straw stuffed in the mouth. This contrast should be seen within the context of how prints for the Tableaux historiques were issued for sale to the public: They were sold in livrets of two, with accompanying texts. Prieur's drawing, “Bertier de Saauvigny,” was not engraved and offered for sale to the public, along with the “Hanging of Foulon” print, which was to have preceded it. It seems to me that a reading of the first of these related images should consider the other as well. The disengagement of one might be seen as a way to set the stage for the other, and to drive home its point. We should imagine the two images appearing together, one next to the other. To do this is to see the disengagement of one image as a foil for the directness of the other.

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