Apotheosis of Louis-Adolphe Thiers

Shrouded in the French flag and surrounded by symbols of national grief, Louis-Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877), president of the Third French Republic, lies in state.To his left, a mourning figure representing France bows her head, while to the right, a nude, winged figure of victory gestures toward the glorified wars of the past unfolding in the heavens. The allegorical composition was disparaged by several critics at the time, reflecting the ambivalence surrounding Thiers’s legacy because of his brutal suppression of the Paris Commune uprising (March–May 1871). This is a smaller, grisaille version (painted in shades of gray) of the colorful painting that was exhibited at the Salon of 1878. Vibert was a painter, printmaker, and amateur photographer, and the unique American frame surrounding his painting underscores its playful mimicry of reproducible media. Constructed in New York in the 1890s, the frame is an enlarged version of the “shadow box” frames that collectors used to exhibit daguerreotypes and other works on paper in their homes.