Wilhelm Trübner Einzug Friedrich des Siegreichen in Heidelberg, 1902
Käthe Kollwitz — Gedenkblatt für Karl Liebknecht (1920). Woodcut.
Karl Liebknecht (13 August 1871, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany – 15 January 1919, Berlin, Germany) was a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919. The uprising was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps (paramilitary units formed of World War I veterans). Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered.
After their deaths, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg became martyrs for Marxists. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Liebknecht and Luxemburg continues to play an important role among the German far-left.
Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin. Portrait of Napoleon III. 1862.
Oil on canvas.
Château de Versailles. Versailles, France.
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was the first President of the French Republic and, as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I. Elected President by popular vote in 1848, he initiated a coup d’état in 1851, before ascending the throne as Napoleon III on 2 December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I’s coronation. He ruled as Emperor of the French until 4 September 1870. He holds the distinction of being both the first titular president and the last monarch of France.
Napoleon III is primarily remembered for an energetic foreign policy which aimed to jettison the limitations imposed on France since 1815 by the Concert of Europe and reassert French influence in Europe and the French colonial empire. Napoleon stood opposed to the reactionary policies imposed at Vienna in 1815 and instead was an exponent of popular sovereignty, and a supporter of nationalism. In the Near East, Napoleon III spearheaded allied action against Russia in the Crimean War and restored French presence in the Levant, claiming for France the role of protector of the Maronite Christians. A French garrison in Rome likewise secured the Papal States against annexation by Italy, defeating the Italians at Mentana and winning the support of French Catholics for Napoleon’s regime.
In the Far East, Napoleon III established French rule in Cochinchina and New Caledonia. French interests in China were upheld in the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion; an abortive campaign against Korea was launched in 1866 while a military mission to Japan failed to prevent the restoration of Imperial rule. French intervention in Mexico was also unsuccessful, and was terminated in 1867 due to mounting Mexican resistance and American diplomatic pressure.
Domestically, Napoleon was balanced between the conservatives and liberals of the French establishment, but he gradually moved toward the liberal element. His reign was an era of prosperity and industrialization in France, facilitating a major renovation of Paris under Haussmann that created the outline of the modern city.
The Second French Empire was overthrown three days after Napoleon’s disastrous surrender at the Battle of Sedan, part of the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870, which resulted in the proclamation of the French Third Republic and his exile in England, where he died in 1873.
Marie Antoinette à la Rose (1783)
by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Marie Antoinette (November 1755 – 16 October 1793), born an Archduchess of Austria, was Dauphine of France from 1770 to 1774 and Queen of France and Navarre from 1774 to 1792. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa.
In April 1770, on the day of her marriage to Louis-Auguste, Dauphin of France, she became Dauphine of France. Marie Antoinette assumed the title of Queen of France and of Navarre when her husband, Louis XVI of France, ascended the throne upon the death of Louis XV in May 1774. After seven years of marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, the first of four children.
Initially charmed by her personality and beauty, the French people generally came to dislike her, accusing “L’Autrichienne” (meaning the Austrian (woman) but sounding like “the other bitch” in French) of being profligate, promiscuous, and of harboring sympathies for France’s enemies, particularly Austria, her country of origin. The Diamond Necklace incident further ruined her reputation. Although she was completely innocent in this affair, she became known as Madame Déficit.
The royal family’s flight to Varennes had disastrous effects on French popular opinion, Louis XVI was deposed and the monarchy abolished on 21 September 1792; the royal family was subsequently imprisoned at the Temple Prison. Eight months after her husband’s execution, Marie Antoinette was herself tried, convicted by the Convention for treason to the principles of the revolution, and executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793.
Even after her death, Marie Antoinette is often considered to be a part of popular culture and a major historical figure, being the subject of several books, films and other forms of media. Some academics and scholars have deemed her frivolous and superficial, and have attributed the start of the French Revolution to her; however, others have claimed that she was treated unjustly and that views of her should be more sympathetic
Francesco Furini - Artemisia Prepares to Drink Ashes of her Husband, Mausolus (c. 1630)
Artemisia II of Caria (in Greek, Ἀρτεμισία; died 350 BC) was a sister, the wife and the successor of the king Mausolus. She was a daughter of Hecatomnus, and after the death of her brother/husband she reigned for two years, from 353 to 351 BC. Her administration was conducted on the same principles as the one of her husband, whence she supported the oligarchical party on the island of Rhodes.
She is renowned in history for her extraordinary grief at the death of her husband (and brother) Mausolus. She is said to have mixed his ashes in her daily drink, and to have gradually pined away during the two years that she survived him. She induced the most eminent Greek rhetoricians to proclaim his praise in their oratory; and to perpetuate his memory she built at Halicarnassus a celebrated majestic monument, listed by Antipater of Sidon as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and whose name subsequently became the generic term for any splendid sepulchral monument (mausoleum, Greek: μαυσωλεῖον).
Alexey Bogolyubov - The Battle of Athos 1807 - 1853
This picture was made in 1853. Picture illustrate the main navy battle of Russo-Turkish war 1806-1812 - The Battle of Athos.
The naval Battle of Mount Athos (also known as the Battle of Monte Sancto and the Battle of Lemnos) took place from 19–22 June 1807 and was a key naval battle of the Russo-Turkish War (1806–12, part of the Napoleonic Wars). It was fought a month after Battle of the Dardanelles.
As a result of the battle, the Ottoman Empire lost a combat-capable fleet for more than a decade and signed an armistice with Russia on 12 August.
William Hodges - Portrait of James cook (1728-1779) - 1775-76
oil on canvas, Measurements Painting:762 x 635 mm
National Maritime Museum, London, UK
William Hodges RA (28 October 1744 – 6 March 1797) was an English painter. He was a member of James Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and is best known for the sketches and paintings of locations he visited on that voyage, including Table Bay, Tahiti, Easter Island, and the Antarctic.
Hodges was born on 28 October 1744 in London. He studied under William Shipley, and afterwards in the studio of Richard Wilson, where he met Thomas Jones.
During his early career, he made a living by painting theatrical scenery.
Between 1772 and 1775 Hodges accompanied James Cook to the Pacific as the expedition’s artist. Many of his sketches and wash paintings were adapted as engravings in the original published edition of Cook’s journals from the voyage.
Most of the large-scale landscape oil paintings from his Pacific travels for which Hodges is best known were finished after his return to London; he received a salary from the Admiralty for the purposes of completing them. These paintings depicted a stronger light and shadow than had been usual in European landscape tradition. Contemporary art critics complained that his use of light and colour contrasts gave his paintings a rough and unfinished appearance.
Hodges also produced many valuable portrait sketches of Pacific islanders and scenes from the voyage involving members of the expedition.
In 1778, under the patronage of Warren Hastings, Hodges travelled to India, one of the first British professional landscape painter to visit that country. He remained there for 6 years, staying in Lucknow with Claude Martin in 1783.
Later Hodges travelled across Europe, including a visit to St. Petersburg in Russia in 1790.
In 1793 Hodges published an illustrated book about his travels in India.
In late 1794 Hodges opened an exhibition of his own works in London that included two large paintings called The Effects of Peace and The Effects of War. In late January, 1795, with Britain engaged in the War of the First Coalition against Revolutionary France and feelings running high, the exhibition was visited by Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, the second son of King George III. The Duke took offence at the political nature of Hodges’ paintings and ordered the exhibition closed; this royal censure effectively ended Hodges’ career as a painter.
Hodges retired to Devon and became involved with a bank, which failed during the banking crisis of March, 1797. On 6 March of that year, he died from what was officially recorded as “gout in the stomach”, but which was also rumored to be suicide from an overdose of laudanum.
William Hodges - The Landing at Tana one of the New Hebrides - 1775-76
Oil on panel
National Maritime Museum, London, UK
New Hebrides was the colonial name for an island group in the South Pacific that now forms the nation of Vanuatu. The New Hebrides were discovered in 1606 by a Spanish expedition led by Pedro Fernandes de Queirós. The islands were colonized by both the British and French in the 18th century shortly after Captain James Cook visited the islands. The two countries eventually signed an agreement making the islands an Anglo-French condominium, which lasted from 1906 until 1980, when the New Hebrides gained their independence as Vanuatu.
William Hodges - The Resolution and the Adventure in Matavai Bay - 1776
It shows the two ships of Commander James Cook’s second voyage of exploration in the Pacific at anchor in Tahiti.
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy. Cook made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years’ War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This helped bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This notice came at a crucial moment in both Cook’s career and the direction of British overseas exploration, and led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages.
In three voyages Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously achieved. As he progressed on his voyages of discovery he surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions.
Cook was killed in Hawaii in a fight with Hawaiians during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific in 1779. He left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge which was to influence his successors well into the 20th century and numerous memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him.
