A FRENCH REVOLUTION THAT IS ALMOST PEACEFUL

IN FIVE ROOMS AND A FULL FLOOR, VIOLENCE AND STRIKING FORCE* ARE ALMOST ABSENT

*The "sans-culottes," artisans and shopkeepers who wore trousers adapted to physical work, in contrast with the breeches and silk stockings of the privileged.

Taking the Bastille can't be left out...

Taking the Bastille by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, toward 1789 / zoom

"The entire world knew, hated the Bastille. Bastille, tyranny, were synonyms in all languages. At the news of its ruin all nations believed themselves delivered.   

In Russia, in that empire of mystery and silence, that monstrous Bastille between Europe and Asia, the news had barely arrived before men of all nations shouted, cried in the squares, threw themselves in each others' arms while stating the news: 'How not cry from joy? the Bastille is taken !' " 

-- History of the French Revolution by Jules Michelet, 1847 (my trans.)

But nothing around it evokes upheaval:

 

The peaceful demolition

• Next to it is the royal family's imprisonment, but nothing about its fate: 

Furniture from their prison at the Temple

•  The unreadable proclamation and unexplained accessory detract from the poignant last portrait of Marie-Antoinette:

• Sole image of the guillotine and rare image of a crowd:

# # #

The hate, fear and drama are left out: There is nothing about the attack on Versailles that forced the king's transfer to Paris,  about his failed flight or about the seizure of the Tuileries palace that brought the end of monarchy. His execution is shown indirectly, by placing him at the foot of the scaffold. That of Marie-Antoinette is not shown at all.

These gaps are not due to an absence of works: This painting is of the massacre of the Swiss guards protecting the Tuileries is in another museum* and though the Carnavalet has at least one work about it in its reserves, it does not show it.

* The Musée du Château de Versailles

La prise du palais des Tuileries le 10 août 1792 ( "Storming the Tuileries palace on August 10, 1792") by Jacques Bertaux / zoom 

# # #

The rank and file that gave the Revolution its power is almost completely left out. This famous picture, absent for five of my six visits...

Portrait of a sans-culotte by Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1792 

Finally appeared in a dark corner, in an arid presentation that was hard to see.

Otherwise it is shown only at the back of the last room, behind proclamations, portraits of middle-class leaders... 

And a game for kids.

# # #

The night before taking the Bastille:

Strong men, patient men, so pacific until then, who on a single day struck a grand blow for Providence, the sight of your families, without resources except for you, did not soften your heart. On the contrary, on seeing for the last time your sleeping children, those children whose destinies the new day would change, your uplifted thought embraced the free generations that would arise from their cradles, and felt in that dawn the combat of the future." 

-- Jules Michelet, History of the French Revolution

A message opposite to that of the museum.

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Next,

Nineteenth-century insurrections as shown before the renovation