Katherine Keenum

Dec 27, 2016 4:06 AM EST

Hi Katherine,

I have sent you a separate message via the web site - but I would be very keen to know the source of your comment " learned in my background reading that Carolus-Duran fought in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871)". I am trying to detail his life during this period. I know that he was living in Brussels in April 1871..but want to know more regarding him in the war.

thanks

Paul

- Paul

Dec 29, 2016 4:34 AM EST

I apologize for not responding to your e-mail. The website mailbox relegated it to the spam folder and is refusing to open it!

I put a lot of what I learned into pp. 381–384 of Where the Light Falls. Briefly, Carolus-Duran served in the 7th Company of the 19th Battalion of the National Guard throughout the Siege of Paris. It was a company made up almost entirely of artists from the Notre-Dame-des Champs neighborhood of Paris and was posted to Bastion 84. The men would go home to their families at night. Immediately upon the ceasefire in 1871, Carolus-Duran applied for a passport and took his wife, mother, daughter, and sister to Brussels.

A terrific English-language source is Hollis Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under the Siege (1870–71), University of Chicago Press (2002).

- Katherine Keenum