Place de la Bastiile 

Antoine Blanchard painted this view of Place de la Bastille using oil on canvas. Blanchard was one of many twentieth-century painters who developed a market for nostalgic views of Paris. The appeal of his canvases lies partly in their facture. Notice the brushwork, particularly in the foreground; Blanchard applied the paint wet-on-wet, a technique known as alla prima. This gives the surface a fluid, almost liquid quality. The appeal of this image is a constructed one. The horse-drawn carriages and Belle Époque fashions signal a romanticized past, a manufactured product as much as it is a work of art. The artist's technique allows the scene to come alive, evoking a memory of a Paris that may never have been. This focus on materials, and the construction of an ideal, asks us to consider the real social conditions of the time. How do these romanticized images obscure the labor, politics, and realities of Parisian life?