The murder FWN 613 1870/1 65cm x 80 Liverpool Walker Gallery
Sometimes it’s difficult to comprehend what happens: an unfolding of the events and facts of the matter just do not seem sufficient; even when you know all there is to know, you’re still left shaking your head in incredulity and sadness at the belligerence of men. Such were the events of 1870, that ended not only the self-proclaimed Empire of Napoleon III of France, but also began the beginning of the end of Empire itself in the history of humankind. A telegram was intercepted, and altered by the Prussian Chancellor, head of the federation of North German states, and thereafter sent anonymously to the French newspapers, who published it the following day. Twenty thousand Parisians marched the streets demanding war in response to the insult contained in the fake news; on 16th July, the French Parliament debated, and voted – and the Emperor of France did what the Prussian Chancellor had hoped he would do - he declared war on Prussia on 19th July 1870. By September, French ministers were having to draft makeshift new armies of 500,000 peasants and labourers from the countryside, but they were never going to match the well-trained and well-armed Prussian troops.The Prussians defeated the French armies and captured the Emperor on the Alsace-Lorraine border in North East France; the Communards declared a New Republic in the name of the people of France, and blockaded Paris, to defend themselves against the Prussians, and against the Emperor’s men. On 28th Jan 1871, with thousands dead, Paris starving, the French Emperor in chains, and all of Northern France controlled by the Prussian armies, the newly formed French “Government of National Defence” negotiated armistice with Prussia; the final slaughter of the Paris communards is brutally enacted by French and Prussian troops during the week of 21st to 28th May 1871, as the Paris Commune Rebellion is brutally crushed.
There’s been some dispute about what this painting represents: Zola’s third novel and his most successful one so far was published in 1868 and tells the gruesome story of a sordid affair, murder and eventual double suicide – not the kind of lighthearted book to read on your day off, but remember, there was no TV then! Zola propounded a theory of “naturalism”- he wrote all his novels to ‘prove’ that human destiny was determined by ‘nature’ rather than by ‘nurture’; what happens to us depends more on our biological and therefore psychological make-up than by our upbringing and personal development. Many commentators think Cezanne’s ‘The Murder’ is a graphic for Zola’s novel; I think not: Zola’s victim is not stabbed, but drowned and she is Algerian. Most art commentators think Cezanne’s painting dates from the early 1870’s – so I think it references the violence and dark dealings of the 1870/71 Franco-Prussian war, and especially the civil war of Empire and Paris Commune: the murder is within the family.
Within seventy years, Europe would be at war twice again. In the history of human development, this seventy year period seems, we hope, to mark the end of the history of Empire; that time in human history extending from the Persian, Assyrian and Babylonian Empires to the British Empire, when the dominant values and organizing principles of society were based on the power of individual men, the subordination of peoples, and the maintenance of social order by force. Great Britain seems to have the dubious honour of being the last in the line of 2500 years of domination through Empire.
Hallelujay, hallelujay,
Hallelujay, hallelujay,
Leonard Cohen