Page 364 - Beholding Liberty!

364 BEHOLDING LIBERTY!
ΙΙ.9.1
After Jean-Claude Bonnefond (1796-1860)
Wounded Greek officer before the walls of an occupied city oil on canvas, 65 × 54 cm
Michael and Demetra Varkarakis Collection
ΙΙ.9.2
A.S. Warrest (unidentified artist)
after Henry-Auguste Serrur (1794-1865)
Wounded Greek soldier in the Siege of Tripolitsa, 1866 oil on canvas, 72 × 62 cm
singed and dated: A.S. Warrest 1866 (bottom left)
Michael and Demetra Varkarakis Collection
THE WOUNDED Greek officer [cat. no II.9.1], centre, is arguably Markos Botsaris, or stands for the fighting Greek people as a whole. He is shown on a boat, supported by two of his comrades-in-arms; he is dying. The male figure to the right points to the flag with the cross waving on the city walls, in the background, as if to comfort the dying man by pointing out that his sacrifice was not in vain.
Similarly, the mortally wounded lone warrior [cat. no II.9.2] sacrificed himself for the success of the Struggle as the Greek revolutionary army conquers Tripolitsa in 1821 – a rare pictorial account of this landmark early episode of the Greek Revolution.
Produced in 1825 and shown at the Salon of the City of Douai, Serrur’s work was acquired by the city’s Société des Amis des Arts and published in lithographic form; in 1827 G. Fry presented his ver- sion after this painting at the same Salon. A variant by Jean-Claude Bonnefond went on public display in his native Lyon in 1826.
In Bonnefond’s work, the wounded man is an officer, probably a well-known one; in Serrur’s – according to A.S. Warrest’s copy – it is an anonymous warrior, in a variation on the same theme. The wounded fighter was an extremely popular subject in philhellenic art, in depictions of fighers, either famous (Markos Bot- saris, Georgios Karaiskakis, Kitsos Tzavellas) or not, which presented to the European public the suffer- ings of the Greek nation in its fight for liberty.