The Death of Bara

This canvas stands three and a half metres tall, and for a state commission it has travelled a good deal. The government ordered it from Weerts in 1880, and it went to the Salon in 1883. Joseph Bara was a 14-year-old from Palaiseau, just south of Paris, killed in 1793 during the war in the Vendée. His commanding officer reported only that the boy had died rather than give up the two horses he was leading. Robespierre then added the famous refusal to shout 'Long live the King'. Weerts puts the horses at the heart of the scene, the boy in a red hussar jacket still holding the reins as peasants close in with scythes and a bayonet. The picture hung in the prefecture at Colmar from 1926 to 1979, went to Palaiseau for the 200th anniversary of Bara's birth, and reached the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.