The barricade on rue de la Mortellerie, June 1848 , known as Souvenir of the Civil War
By Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier
As an artillery captain in the National Guard, Meissonier witnessed the June 1848 events himself, when General Cavaignac’s forces put down the Paris uprising. He recorded what he saw in a small painting that feels almost like a news report. Its strict realism is so sharp and unembellished that it resembles a daguerreotype. Delacroix himself remarked, “It’s horribly true.”
The setbacks and disillusionments of the 1848 Revolution and the Second Republic helped Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte rise politically. He gained support from different parts of society: the bourgeoisie, who feared revolutionary unrest; the rural population, often skeptical of the Republic; and even some workers, drawn to his promises of social reform. On December 10, 1848, he was elected President of the Republic.
Meissonier’s depiction of the barricade also seems to anticipate a further violent crackdown: the repression that came after the coup d’état of December 2, 1851. That event would set the tone for the emerging imperial regime, leaving it marked from the start by a distinctive and troubling stain.
