c. 1918

The Marseillaise

Arthur Beecher Carles

American, 1882 - 1952

The Marseillaise is one of Carles’s most ambitious and celebrated works. Its initial inspiration was a performance of "La Marseillaise", the French national anthem, at a victory rally held in Philadelphia in 1918, shortly after the conclusion of World War I. The artist’s affinity for France is evident, as are complex feelings of shock, mourning, and redemption connected with the end of warfare. A startlingly pale figure stands alone and without clothes above a grave in a desolate terrain. The tattering of the French flag symbolizes the nation’s hardship, but there is an element of triumph in the figure’s upraised gesture.

The Marseillaise met with strong public acclaim when it appeared in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art’s 1919 annual exhibition. Critics praised the work as a startling expression of the pathos and relief then being felt across Europe and the United States, and for it Carles earned a number of prestigious honors.