How does this artwork elucidate its Manet as a National Guard – background to the creation of the painting?
In 1870, Manet took an innovative step in his artistic career by completing a work en plein air for the first time. This work, entitled In the Garden, was the first of its kind as his previous outdoor pieces arose from sketches that we later transferred to an oil canvas in his studio. On July 19 of the same year, France declared war on Prussia, with Manet taking part in the conflict as a staunch Republican opposed to the policies of Napoléon III. He spent the summer holiday with his family in Saint-Germain-en-Laye before returning to Paris in August, to observe the war's developments.
Upon the defeat of the French troops at the Battle of Sedan in 1870, Manet welcomed the proclamation of the Republic on 4 September, but recognised the danger of enemy armies advancing on Paris. He sent his mother, wife, and their son to Oloron-Sainte-Marie in the Pyrenees for safety. While some of Manet's artist friends, such as Claude Monet, had fled to London prior to the war, Manet remained in Paris and enlisted in the National Guard. During the ensuing months of siege of Paris, Manet, who otherwise left few written testimonies, wrote numerous letters to his family and friends, documenting the changing daily life of the capital and providing insight into his thoughts and emotional state. Since Paris had been surrounded by enemy troops from the 19 September, these letters had to be sent by balloon in order to leave the city.
At the beginning of the Siege of Paris, Claude Monet wrote about his daily military exercises and his duty as a sentry on the fortifications surrounding the city. His letters expressed a certain patriotic confidence, but he came to lament the boredom and increasing costs of food in his latter writings. In October of 1970, Monet was afflicted by a foot ailment and wrote to his wife the following month that he was "gradually dying of hunger." Three days later Manet reported the existence of slaughterhouses for cats, dogs, and rats. His experiences during the siege are believed to have inspired his etching of Snake in Front of the Butcher's Shop, which Edward Lilley interpreted as a representation of "history from below," depicting the great deprivation wreaked by the war on the general populace.
National Guard Siege of Paris Saint-Germain-en-Laye Napoléon III en plein air plein air Oloron-Sainte-Marie balloon Pyrenees Claude Monet Prussia