
Louis XVI Entering Paris, October 6, 1789
Jacques François Joseph Swebach
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
One outcome of the Women’s March on Versailles was that Louis XIV conceded to bringing his court and the National Constituent Assembly to Paris. In this watercolor, Swebach depicts the arrival procession of the royal family through the city, with onlookers peering from every window and both revelers and protesters lining the street. The artist chose a symbolically fraught moment as the carriage approaches the gate to the Dominican monastery on the rue Saint-Honoré, which soon became the seat of the Jacobins after the nationalization of Church property the following month. Swebach, who also adopted the name Desfontaines, signed and dated this work in the banner hanging from the building at right.
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.