The Defense of Paris

Meissonier began 'The Defense of Paris' in the immediate aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, which ended with French capitulation in January 1871. The Prussian siege of Paris lasted four months; Meissonier participated in the defense as a National Guard officer and witnessed the city's suffering directly. This canvas, begun around 1870, represents his attempt to monumentalize the resistance rather than the defeat. France's allegorical figure — a woman in armor or a commanding male officer, common conventions of patriotic painting — would have resonated with the intense national grief and self-examination of the early Third Republic. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the work as an example of Meissonier's political engagement, often overlooked in favor of his quieter historical genre scenes. The defense of Paris became a founding myth of the Third Republic, and Meissonier's treatment contributed to that iconography alongside images by Détaille and de Neuville.

Oil on canvas at a scale larger than Meissonier's typical cabinet pictures, allowing broader compositional ambition. Brushwork loosens slightly in the background, where smoke or atmospheric haze is suggested, while foreground figures retain his characteristic precision. The palette is deliberately sombre — iron greys and cold blues — appropriate to winter siege conditions.