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Your galleryThe Defense of Paris
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Start with the woman and the flag, then look down at the fallen soldiers and up to the dark bird in the smoke at the upper left.
Meissonier painted this small, loosely brushed panel in 1870–71. A woman holding a sword stands before a torn French flag. Soldiers fight behind her, and dead men and a horse lie heaped at her feet. The panel was still with Meissonier when he died, and it was sold from his estate in Paris in 1893.
Oil on panel · 29.2 × 36.2 cm · Art Institute of Chicago
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Defense of Paris
- Artist
- Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (French, 1815–1891)
- Date
- 1870–71
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 29.2 × 36.2 cm (11 1/2 × 14 1/4 in.); Framed: 49.2 × 58.7 cm (19 3/8 × 23 1/8 in.)
- Credit line
- George F. Harding Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Artist’s life 1815–1891
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.