Seeing French Art the French Way: An interview with Mme Boyaval
- Liza Vasiliu
- Feb 17
- 7 min read
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic era led to the creation of a myriad of paintings, some filled with symbolism and others with propaganda. In this interview, I speak with Madame Boyaval, a French teacher, to get her thoughts on how French art reflects its history. Here’s what she had to say.
Q: So to begin with, what are some of the most famous or iconic paintings from the French Revolution that are commonly studied and appreciated by the French?
Mme Boyaval: So, first of all, you know the very famous one, Liberty Guiding the People. It's a revolutionary painting, that's true, but it's not from the famous revolution of 1789. It's one from 1830. So it's still a revolutionary artwork, but it's not related to 1789. So that's the most famous and obviously the one that all French people know and abroad.
We study it in class. We see that the main character represents the nation, the people, its liberty, and then all around it you have all the characters that represent the different classes of society. In the background you have Paris.
But there are other famous paintings that we work on at school especially. I can't talk outside of school (1:26) because I have very little knowledge of art, even less about the revolution. But we have a few.
One iconic one is La Prise de la Bastille, when they take the Bastille.
I don't remember having a specific painting because there were a few of them made to mark this day.
So, you have this one. You have paintings with people being beheaded with the guillotine. So those are very famous, with people carrying heads in front of the crowd. Those are paintings as well that we see in our history books. Two that are specific and seen in history books but in museums as well are the Death of Marat in his bath and Le Serment du Jeu de paume.
Marat was a journalist and a politician and other things when he died.
He used to write in his bath and someone came to murder him. So you have this famous painting of him holding what he was writing or maybe a note of the one who killed him. I can't remember exactly.
Interviewer: I think he was doing his work for the National Assembly in the tub, right? Because he was sick.
Mme Boyaval: Possibly, yes. He felt better in the tub and he used to say things like, I don't know exactly but things like, we need 10,000 dead for the revolution to succeed. So the person who came killed him and said that this one dead should be enough for the revolution. Something like this. There's a legend about it. Honestly, I don't know it very well but there's a story like that.
And then there's another famous painting, Le Serment du Jeu de paume. It was when the Assembly, so that's the very beginning of the revolution of 1789, was not going well, and the Assembly wanted to implement a constitution which was going against the power of the King, of course. So, the King had the Assembly closed.
So all the deputies they went to this Jeu de Paume place, which was the ancestor of tennis, basically. So they all went there. There were like 600 deputies in there, and that's where they made the promise of never stopping.
Interviewer: The tennis court oath.
Mme Boyaval: Yeah, exactly. So they made this oath to never stop showing up until they got the constitution. That's one of the paintings that marks the start of the revolution. So that's the ones that I know, that I can remember of. I know that we've seen that in class in history books to illustrate the different chapters of revolution.
Interviewer: All right, that's very interesting. Thank you for your answer.
Q: What is the importance of the woman in the painting Liberty Leading the People and how does she represent the French nation or the idea of liberty itself, since we already mentioned this?
Mme Boyaval: Well, I think that's already la liberté in French; it's feminine. So, having a feminine figure to represent la liberté, I think, and start from there. But also it goes, let's say, it contrasts with a world that is led by men and in the painting, you see that all the other characters are men so you have this contrast here. Then it's a woman and she is the biggest character, she's the main focus of the painting. She has one of her breasts, well she has her breasts out and she has hair under her armpits, which goes against all the prejudice and how women should be, etc. She's also barefoot in this painting, which shows that she belongs to the people. She is dirty. She really is not afraid of taking the weapon. She holds, she carries a weapon. It's very powerful that it's a woman that goes against all beauty standards and what a woman should be, that she stays at home and she takes care of the family. No, here she is the main actor leading the men. And also how she represents the French nation or even later the Republic, is that she has the hat, so the bonnet phrygien, which is one of the iconic symbols of revolution. As well, she is wearing this, how do you call it, like drapes, kind of. It reminds people of Greek or Roman artwork. So it puts her as like a goddess, kind of. So she has the shape, she has the attire, she has the presence, she has the place of a goddess, let's say. Maybe it's a bit too much, but she has this place in the painting.
And also later, as I said, she becomes the symbol of the Republic because we put this face with this hat as our Marianne, which is one of the symbols of France, which is a woman as well. It's the symbol against monarchy and empire later and the symbol of the Republic of the people and democracy.
Q: All right, so now we're going a bit further temporally toNapoleon. How did paintings of his battles portray Napoleon, not just as a military leader, but also as a romantic hero in the eyes of the French people during the Napoleonic era?
Mme Boyaval: Well, I don't know many paintings of him. I just know the one, the famous one, (8:35) where he's on his horse with.
I think it's because the attention or the focus of the painting is not on the battle, it's on him. From what I remember, I think the colours are a bit lighter, a bit clearer on him and darker on the rest.
He has this, once again, this power, that is coming from the gods or something like this, like a figure that is not reachable, not attainable. And so, I don't know, it just looks like a hero who's going to save everyone on his own. But I can't speak much about the representation of Napoleon in paintings. I know nothing about it.
Q: We're going a bit to the present. How is he, Napoleon, generally viewed by the French in modern times?
Mme Boyaval: He is a huge figure of French history, but also European history.People around the world know him for his military conquests or defeats, for his legend, the fact that he was the first emperor of France, the was such an important man, politician and historical figure in French history.So he's seen, he's still seen positively, let's say, even though that changes. It used to be because of all the power that he had and the influence that he had in France and in Europe, for some progress that he made in French society. He was seen as a hero, as a savior. But even during his time, obviously his power went down. He was in exile. Then he came back for a hundred days. People, current people obviously, did not know him, so there's this positive, powerful image of him. There's this huge, what is it called, coffin, in France, I can't remember the monument's name now.
Interviewer: Oh yeah, at the Invalides.
Mme Boyaval: Les Invalides, yes, exactly. And it's a huge coffin, a marble one. Yeah, it's very impressive. So it's still the place that he has in our history and in our landscape as well. But more and more his legend loses some, I don't know, shine? I don't know how to say it. It's not as shiny as it used to be because obviously we see it with what really happened. So all the progress of the civil court, okay, that's progress, but within it you have a lot of regression. Women lost rights that they gained with the revolution. He put back slavery and obviously the conquest in Europe that left millions dead. He threw a coup to be in power. He was a tyrant.
More and more the vision of him is changing and it's more nuanced than it used to be. Before it was this big person that everybody admired. It's not the case anymore and it's less and less the case. I did some research about it. There's still more positive opinions about him but it's going down and there's more male positive opinions than female ones, feminine ones. Once again, it's divided here because I guess men find this inspirational person that they want to be. I guess women don't feel as concerned as men for that.
Interviewer: Thank you so much for this interview!
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