Engima - Gustave Doré, 1871

From the Musée d’Orsay’s website:

For Gustave Doré, born in Strasbourg, France’s defeat by Prussia in 1870, and the consequential loss of Alsace-Lorraine, was a great source of distress. Just after the end of the war he produced three monumental works: The Enigma, The Black Eagle of Prussia and The Defence of Paris, all in shades of grey and presented under the general title ofSouvenirs of 1870, when the contents of the artist’s studio were sold posthumously in 1884.

Of these three paintings, The Enigma is undeniably the most tragic. At the top of a hill, strewn with bodies, there stands a sphinx, a mythical monster with the body of a lion and the head of a human. In the distance, plumes of smoke rise up from a Paris set ablaze by enemy cannon. Under the dark sky, a winged woman, perhaps the embodiment of France seems to be asking the sphinx for answers. The sphinx appears to be compassionate, closer to the sphinx of Egyptian religion, guardian of the underworld, rather than the monster Oedipus came across in Greek mythology.

Posted on May 6 2011, with 94 Notes

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    Engima, Gustave Doré 1871 For Gustave Doré, born in Strasbourg, France’s defeat by Prussia in 1870, and the...

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