L'Apothéose de la canaille, also known as Le Triomphe de Robert Macaire (The Triumph of Robert Macaire)

The general amnesty granted to the Communards in 1880 gave rise to numerous scenes of the Paris Commune. Boutet de Monvel's large-scale allegory of the Commune for the Salon of 1885 was the talk of the town. A ragged, drunken man sits atop a barricade, crushing an allegory of France with his foot. He wears the crown and red cloak of the sovereign, consecrated by the scoundrel, the figure stretching out his arms behind him in the guise of the brigand Robert Macaire, hero of the famous melodrama L'Auberge des Adretsaccompanied by his accomplice Bertrand playing the bass drum to the cheers of the crowd. The low-angle composition and cartoonish foreshortening are striking in their power and originality. The color scheme is symbolically tricolored: the blue of the rabble's jackets, the white of the barricade and the red flag on the coat and other flags brandished by these aggressively outstretched hands with their black fingernails. Like Zola in L'Assommoir (1877) and in Germinalcontemporaries of the painting.

Boutet de Monvel offers a striking view of the working classes, the dangerous classes whose revolts made and broke regimes throughout the 19th century.

More than a charge against the Commune, the work is a critique of universal suffrage and democracy, the very foundations of the Republic. Fear of the altercations that this violently anti-Republican pamphlet might provoke caused the painting to be withdrawn from the gallery a few days before the Salon opened. In the name of artistic freedom and to allow readers to judge for themselves, Le Figaro decided to exhibit the painting on its premises, while the Communard Henri Rochefort himself condemned the Council's decision, in the name of artistic freedom, despite the subject matter.

The 1980 reappearance of this icon of the Third Republic was an opportunity to acquire it at a time when

the Museum's installation in the current building should enable it to be presented.