The Execution of Emperor Maximilian

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The Execution of Emperor Maximilian is a series of paintings by

Manet supported the Republican cause, particularly as represented by Léon Gambetta,^[1] but was inspired to start work on a painting, heavily influenced by Goya's The Third of May 1808. The final work, painted in 1868–1869 is now held by the Kunsthalle Mannheim. The painting is signed by Manet in the lower left corner, bearing the date of Maximilian's execution in 1867, not when the work was completed 1868–1869.

Fragments of an earlier and larger painting from about 1867–1868 are held by the National Gallery in London. Parts of that work were probably cut off by Manet, but it was largely complete on his death. Other parts were sold separately after his death. The surviving pieces were reassembled by Edgar Degas and they were bought by the National Gallery in 1918, then separated again until 1979, and finally combined on one canvas in 1992.^[2]

A third, unfinished, oil painting is held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, donated from Mr. and Mrs. Frank Gair Macomber in 1930, who bought it from Ambroise Vollard in 1909. A much smaller work in oils, the study for the Mannheim painting is held by the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.

Manet was refused permission to reproduce the lithograph in 1869,^{[by whom?]} but an edition of 50 impressions was produced in 1884, after his death. Examples of the lithograph are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

In the Boston version of the painting, the soldiers wear clothes and sombrero of Mexican Republicans. In the final version in Mannheim, "[t]he soldiers in the painting wear uniforms almost identical to French troops, and the man preparing for the

• 
  Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, c. 1865
• 
  General Tomás Mejía, c. 1864
• 
  General Miguel Miramón, c. 1860s
• 
  Goya's The Third of May 1808
• 
  Reconstruction of the execution of Maximilian (right in photograph) Miramón (center) and Mejía (left)

See also

• List of paintings by Édouard Manet

References