Modernity and Military Painting François Flameng It is one of the ironies of the first modern war that the oldest of artists painted the newest of things–the first airplanes that flew combat missions in the Great War. French academic artist François Flameng...
War and Glory The Art of Valiant Defeat, Part Four By any measure the Franco-Prussian War was a disaster, not just for France but also for Europe and the future. This war cemented the rising destiny of Prussia as a major power on the continent and the defeat of France...
War and Glory From Meissonier to Detaille, Part Two In attempting to explain and understand the attraction of the French nation to the memory of the recently deposed, defeated and deceased disgraced Emperor Napoléon Ier (1769-1821), the Viscount François-René de...
The Panoramas: Rewriting History Representing history in France had always been fraught with difficulty for centuries. Not until the Third Republic (1870-1940) was it possible to report, write or make art without the threatening overhang of censorship, but, after the...
IMPRESSIONISM, FASHION, AND MODERNITY Musée d’Orsay, Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago September 2012-September 2013 Part Four: Fashion as Costume Often though of as an unsatisfactory attempt at a large scale painting by a...
