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2 - Archiving and Envisioning the French Revolution (c.1780–1830)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2020

Tom Stammers
Tom Stammers
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

This chapter describes the role of private individuals who aimed to collect the traces of the French Revolution amidst the tumultuous events. It is centred on the figure of Jean-Louis Soulavie, and his unique collection of prints and drawings, now split between the Louvre and regional archives. It discusses how Soulavie acquired and interpreted this corpus of images, drawing connections with his changing political convictions, and the different functions ascribed to the image, including the commemorative (especially for victims of the Terror), the explanatory (seeking to understand the cause-and-effect of revolutionary processes) and the predictive (echoing Soulavie’s belief in the occult power of images). It connects Soulavie’s engagement with visual culture with other aspects of his collecting and considers the dispersal of many cabinets assembled by this first generation of collector-historians during the Restoration.

Keywords

French RevolutionJacobinsheritagevisual culturedrawingsprintsarchivecounter-revolutionhistoriographycollectingcommemoration
Type
Chapter
Information
The Purchase of the Past
Collecting Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris c.1790–1890
 , pp. 69 - 115
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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