The Baricade, Edouard Manet

The Prints and Drawings Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest) has a watercolour/gouache (The Barricade) by Manet depicting a summary execution of Communards by Versailles troops based on a lithograph of the execution of Maximilian. A similar piece, oil on plywood, is held by a private collector.
On 18 March 1871 he wrote to his friend Felix Bracquemond in Paris about his visit to Bordeaux, the provisory seat of the French National Assembly of the Third French Republic where Emile Zola introduced him to the sites: “I never imagined that France could be represented by such doddering old fools, not excepting that little twit Thiers…” If this could be interpreted as support of the Commune a following letter to Bracquemond expressed his idea more clearly: “Only party hacks and the ambitious, the Henrys of this world following on the heels of the Millieres, the grotesque imitators of the Commune of 1793…” He knew the communard Lucien Henry to have been a former painter’s model and Milliere, an insurance agent. “What an encouragement all these bloodthirsty caperings are for the arts! But there is at least one consolation in our misfortunes: that we’re not politicians and have no desire to be elected as deputies”.