The Charge

Paris at the turn of the century saw plenty of street clashes, with striking workers, anarchists, nationalists and crowds on both sides of the Dreyfus Affair. André Devambez showed this canvas at the Salon of 1902 and never says which of them is being charged. A line of police on foot sweeps across the Boulevard Montmartre at night, and the crowd breaks before it into a dark, nameless mass. In the middle the charge has cleared an empty circle of pale pavement around a single lamppost, where a few figures still run, their shadows stretching behind them. Beyond it, the city carries on under electric light, with glowing café terraces, lit advertising columns and a horse-drawn cab waiting by the kerb. The French state bought the painting in 1979.