A Famous Painting About a Historic Execution Comes to Los Angeles

A famous painting that tells the story of a shocking historical execution is coming to California. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena will display Édouard Manet's 'Execution of Maximilian' starting November 14. The painting has not been shown in the United States for 20 years, and it is on loan from London's National Gallery in England.

The painting shows the death of Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, an Austrian nobleman who briefly ruled as the emperor of Mexico in the 1860s. The French emperor Napoleon III had pushed Maximilian to take the throne. But in 1867, Maximilian and two of his generals were shot by soldiers loyal to Benito Juárez, the former president of Mexico who had been driven out of the capital by French forces. When news of Maximilian's death spread across Europe, many people were furious and blamed Napoleon III for what had happened.

French artist Édouard Manet painted five different versions of this event between about 1867 and 1868. The painting coming to Pasadena is the second version. Art experts say the painting is unusual because it does not make the execution look heroic or dramatic. Instead, Manet painted the scene in a cold, matter-of-fact way, as if violence were just an ordinary event. This style was very different from most political paintings of the time, and it helped change the way artists depicted war and politics.

The story of how this painting survived is just as dramatic as what it shows. Manet himself was unhappy with it because the figures he painted were different sizes, and he may have thrown it away. After Manet died, his family cut the canvas into four pieces and sold them separately. The painting was rescued by Manet's good friend Edgar Degas, the famous French artist, who tracked down all four pieces. The National Gallery in London bought the fragments in 1918 and later pieced the painting back together in the late 1970s.

Emily Talbot, the chief curator at the Norton Simon Museum, said the painting is important not just as a great work of art, but also as a way to think about how images shape our understanding of history. She noted that the museum will display the painting alongside historical documents about the French involvement in Mexico. 'By bringing this extraordinary painting together with historical materials that document the French intervention in Mexico, we invite visitors to consider how history is constructed in visual form,' she said.

Beyond this special exhibition, Los Angeles has a packed calendar of arts events in the coming weeks. The Los Angeles Philharmonic's new music director, Daniel Harding, will lead the orchestra in works by Leonard Bernstein and Johannes Brahms at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Broadway star Idina Menzel will perform with the Pacific Symphony in Costa Mesa on Friday and Saturday nights. Theater fans can also look forward to 'Purpose,' a Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning play directed by Phylicia Rashad, opening at the Geffen Playhouse.

There is also exciting news in the visual arts world. An exhibition called 'I Saw a Woman, Pounding Light into Mortar' features works by six Iranian American women artists at a Chinatown gallery. The show explores themes of exile, fear, and longing, drawing on the artists' experiences of watching political turmoil in Iran from thousands of miles away. Curator Katayoun Bahrami said the show grew out of a terrifying period when internet shutdowns in Iran made it impossible to know if family members were safe.