Le Centenaire de l'Indépendance

In 1892 France was marking 100 years since the Republic of 1792, a century on from a beginning that had quickly turned into the Terror, so the anniversary was determined to look united and calm. Rousseau gives it a village dance. Peasants join hands in a farandole, a folk round from the south of France, circling three liberty trees while two women in the middle stand for the old Republic and the new. He took the dancers straight from a magazine illustration and even added a couplet of his own along the bottom. Off to the right, a knot of dark-suited officials stands stiff and apart from the ring of dancers, and he leaves the two worlds side by side without joining them.