Imaging the French Revolution Discussion
Imaging the French Revolution Discussion
               
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1. Are images vital sources of historical knowledge that have been insufficiently exploited?
 
images as sources Lynn Hunt, 5-31-03, 5:48 PM
RE: images as sources Wayne Hanley, 6-6-03, 9:29 AM
RE: Images as Sources (June 22, 2003) Barbara Day-Hickman, 6-22-03, 4:40 PM
reading images Lynn Hunt, 6-23-03, 10:44 PM
historical knowledge Vivian Cameron, 7-5-03,
5:15 PM
Some belated comments Warren Roberts, 7-9-03,
10:53 AM
A postscript Warren Roberts 7-9-03, 11:28 AM
More on images as sources Joan B. Landes, 7-12-03,
2:33 PM
RE: More on images as sources Vivian Cameron
7-26-03, 4:22 PM

Subject: Some belated comments
Posted By: Warren Roberts
Date Posted: 7-9-03, 10:53 AM

I’ve avoided this question up to now because of the word “knowledge,” which isn’t the word I would use to explain what images have meant to me. Images have added to my understanding of the Revolution. For me the key word is “understanding.” But yes, images do have knowledge that isn’t found in other sources, meaning texts. As I proceed to my first point, I’m not certain if what I’m about to say pertains to “knowledge” or “understanding,” but let me make the point anyway. Images show us something. Texts can’t do that. To read about the events that took place in the Place de Grève on 14 July and 22 July 1789 is one thing; to see what happened, which we can do through images, is something else, or at least it is for me. By comparing images of crowds in action on these two days I have acquired understanding, and perhaps knowledge that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. I know that different illustrators depicted crowds differently on these two days, and by scrutinizing these differences I am able to achieve fuller understanding of the events; also I am able to see something of the illustrators’ own responses to the events they depicted. For me this is part of the actual history of the Revolution: the Revolution wasn’t just what happened, the events themselves, but how people responded to them. In the case of illustrators who made images of the Revolution this is of particular importance because their images, when disseminated, helped define the Revolution—in some measure—for contemporaries whose understanding of events was influenced by the images they saw.

Images have much to say about particular spaces in Paris that were important to the Revolution. Let me take one of them, the Place Louis XV\Place de la Révolution. Prieur’s 5th tableau, The busts of the Duc D’Orleans and Necker are carried in triumph and broken in the place Louis XV, shows the first eruption of violence in the Paris Insurrection on the afternoon of July 12, as Parisians clash with German guards in the center of the Place Louis XV below the equestrian statue of Louis XV. As was often the case with Prieur, the illustration is scripted; less accurate than other depictions of this event, it shows the violence taking place at the base of Bouchardon’s LOUIS XV equestrian statue, rather than at the far end of the place Louis XV or inside the adjacent tuileries gardens, the actual scene of the conflict, according to other images and textual accounts of this event. Framing the image as he did, with violence taking place directly under the Louis XV equestrian statue, and with the king looking down on savage fighting, Prieur made a commentary on the Place Louis XV. The Place Louis XV was built in honor of a king who
The Place Louis XV was built in honor of a king who became the object of popular rumor, ridicule, and hostility, and when Bouchardon’s equestrian statue was installed in 1763 spies overheard Parisians mocking the king. Workers had to clean graffiti from the monument after the time of its installation. Images by other illustrators offer a more accurate depiction of what happened in the Place XV on July 12 than does Prieur’s image. Yet Prieur’s scripted image captures something that was very real, hostility in Paris to a king who—historians now feel—helped undermine the institution of monarchy.

Helman and Monnet’s engraving, “Execution of Louis Capet in the Place de la Révolution,” can be seen as a sequel to Prieur’s tableau. This image shows a scaffold installed in the Place de la Revolution, the former Place Louis XV, a short distance from the pedestal of Bouchardon’s Louis XV monument, from which the equestrian statue had been torn away. The guillotine and the pedestal, shorn of the Louis XV equestrian statue, are objects that say much about this space and its importance to the Revolution. Images tell us much about other places, other physical spaces that were important to the Revolution, within which events took place that helped define the Revolution in its various stages. Spaces such as the Place de Grève and the Place Louis XV were heavy with symbolic meaning for people who experienced the Revolution. Space and memory contributed to the dynamics of crowds in action. Images help me to understand this dynamic.
 
 
 
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