In 1978, Bernard Buffet created a series of lithographs dedicated to three major episodes of the French Revolution: The Storming of the Bastille, The Storming of the Tuileries, and The Battle of Valmy.
These works must be viewed within the context of their creation: the series was published amid a political and cultural climate in which the memory of the Revolution was being reexamined—both critically and through a process of reappropriation. Buffet, deeply attached to certain symbols of France—cathedrals, clowns, cities, martyrs—has always maintained a strong connection to national history, viewed through a tragic, tense, almost liturgical lens. For him, the Revolution is not depicted as a liberating celebration, but as a historical, almost biblical drama, made of iron, fire, dense crowds, and impassive faces. What interests him is not the romantic exaltation of the people, but collective tragedy: the tension, the contained violence, the faltering order, and the inexorable inevitability of great upheavals.
The fact that he chose three key events, all occurring between July and August 1792 (July 14, 1789, for the Bastille; August 10, 1792, for the Tuileries; September 22, 1792, for Valmy), also demonstrates a desire to condense into a visual trilogy the moment when the monarchy collapsed and the Republic asserted itself through bloodshed. Buffet is not interested in the Declaration of the Rights of Man or philosophical debates: he paints the upheaval, the war, the assault, the concrete struggle—that is, the moment when history is made in the streets. This choice accentuates the dramatic pathos that permeates his entire body of work—the figures are angular and stiff, black lines streak across the image like wounds; the crowds are anonymous, the settings sparse, and the colors dark and few in number.
