056

  • Femmes en révolte (Women in Revolt)

  • ca. late eighteenth century
  • Philibert-Louis Debucourt (French 1755-1832)
  • Watercolor
  • 23.1 x 37.0 cm., 9-1/16 x 14-9/16" image
  • Gift in Honor of Dr. Thomas William and Mrs. Barbara Lee Carter through Drs. Gary and Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2004.23

Essay by Angela Granet Lynch, Class of 2001

Femmes en révolte is a watercolor attributed to French artist Philibert-Louis Debucourt by Parisian art dealer, Pierre Jonchères, from whom the painting was purchased. In attributing this painting to Debucourt, Jonchères referenced the artist's work titled Almanach National (Goebel 96). Debucourt is cited frequently in discussions of eighteenth-century French genre painting and color printmaking; however, literature on the artist's work and career is not extensive. Debucourt worked throughout the Revolution and is known for his skill in a variety of printmaking methods often combining several techniques in the same design (Taws 170-71). The Gazette des Beaux-Arts compared Debucourt to Jean-Honoré Fragonard (web gallery 38) as he retained the rose, blue, and gold palette of Rococo-era painters like Fragonard (Goebel 96). This palette is abundant in Femmes en révolte.

This watercolor depicts a mob of women rioting in a street amongst tall buildings suggesting an urban location. The windows of these buildings are filled with onlookers. The loose, flurried lines used in the painting suggest the crowdedness and frenzied movements of the scene. In the foreground, one can see toppled baskets of food as well as women who have been knocked over in the revolt. The fact that women are rioting amidst overturned food seems to suggest that this may be a subsistence riot. Information from Bohstedt's essay seems to support this theory as he notes that when women revolted, they tended to be involved in food riots (29). In pre-Revolutionary Europe, food riots were significant as were women's roles in them (Bohstedt 21). Bohstedt reports that 1000 riots took place between the years 1790-1810 because they were often successful and forced authorities to respond (Bohstedt 24). Objectives of these riots were local and concrete: women taking over food markets to stop profiteering through local export of grain in times of famine (Bohstedt, 24); their motivation was hunger and the need to feed their children (McMillan 21) as well as to gain constitutional rights (Levy and Applewhite, "Popular Classes" 27).

While this painting may or may not depict a particular riot, the presence of women in bread riots and in the politics of subsistence has been documented through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (McMillan, 20). The year 1775 recorded the "flour wars" in Paris after which fourteen women were arrested for protesting against steep rises in the price of flour and bread (McMillan, 21). In October 1789, a group of 7000 women marched fourteen kilometers to Versailles, armed with pikes, clubs, knives, swords, and muskets in the rain while crying out against the scarcity of bread. One group demanded that King Louis XVI's verbal promises of wheat supplies for Paris be put into writing. Another group marched on the National Legislature and demanded a guaranteed supply of affordable bread (Levy and Applewhite "Militant Citizenship" 83). In April 1795, women protested again for food shortages. When their pleas went unheeded, they protested by sacking shops, seizing grain, and kidnapping officials before launching a May 20th uprising when women descended on the Convention to plead for bread and democracy (McMillan 24-25).