Edmond Guilliaume
French, active 1870s
Bismarck, from Les Génies de la Mort
INV-1193
Edmond Guilliaume
French, active 1870s1870
Bismarck, from Les Génies de la Mort
Edmond Guilliaume French, active 1870s →lithographprint
Date
1870
Medium
Color lithograph on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 55.3 × 44.3 cm (21 13/16 × 17 1/2 in.); Sheet: 70.3 × 53.6 cm (27 11/16 × 21 1/8 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Robert Chase Endowment
Edmond Guilliaume’s images are blunt caricatures that combine well-known German symbols, war leaders, and macabre images of destruction. Otto von Bismarck became prime minister of the Prussian state in 1862 and of the unified German Empire in 1871. To a French audience, he was the cruel leader of the Franco- Prussian War (1870–71). With a skull head, pointed Prussian helmet, and Prussian eagle superimposed on his face, Bismarck looms like a poisonous, grasping plant over the destruction of the French countryside. Playing off a noble coat of arms, Guilliaume gave the French enemy a ghoulish image of death.
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