A Street in Paris in May 1871

In the last week of May 1871, government troops took Paris back from the Commune district by district, and thousands of its defenders were shot where they were caught. Maximilien Luce was 13 and living in the city. More than 30 years later, between 1903 and 1905, he put what he had seen on a canvas over two metres wide. The dead lie in the foreground, most of them in the blue tunics and red-piped trousers of the National Guard, the insurgents' citizen militia. A woman in a long skirt lies among them. Further up the empty road one more body lies alone. The shops are shuttered, the house fronts are in full sun, and in the corner a heap of loose paving stones is what remains of a barricade. It was the first of several large pictures Luce devoted to the Commune.