Rochefort's Escape was painted by Manet after December
1880.
Virulently opposed to the imperial regime, Rochefort
founded a political newspaper, La Lanterne in 1868. The newspaper,
which was published in Brussels, was soon banned. In 1873, the
journalist was sentenced to penal servitude for his role during
the Commune. His spectacular, swashbuckling escape by sea, in
1874, inspired Manet to paint this strange composition, six years
after the event. The artist waited for the Republican victory in
the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies in January 1879 and a law
granting the communards amnesty, in July 1880, which permitted the
fugitive to return to France, before tackling the subject. He
intended to enter his painting in the Salon of 1881.
By commemorating an event still fresh in all minds,
Manet revolutionised the genre of history painting traditionally
restricted to antique or mythological subjects. The barely
recognisable hero with his tousled blond hair "like a flaming
punchbowl", is here shown at the stern of a tiny dinghy bobbing
through the waves. Alongside him are his accomplices, Pain,
Grousset and Jourde. The sense of solitude and danger is made
palpable by the size of the craft. An electric, phosphorescent
sea, painted with small, flicked strokes, floods the entire
canvas. It "rises to the top of the frame", where the ship that
picked up the fugitives looms on the horizon.
Manet chose a vague technique to represent a
six-year-old event which he had not witnessed. But the endless sea
superbly conjures up the danger and drama. This paradoxical canvas
also expresses his disappointment with Rochefort who had dashed
his Republican hopes.
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