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Contesting 'Le Corps Militaire': Antimilitarism, Pacificism, Anarcho-Communism and 'Le Douanier' Rousseau's 'La Guerre’

This peer-reviewed article contributed to the special issue of the RIHA Journal of the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art entitled ‘New Directions in Neo-Impressionism’, edited by Anne Dymond and Tania Woloshyn in cooperation with Regina Wenninger and Anne-Laure Brisac-Chraïbi. Its originality lies in the way that for the first time Brauer’s research exposes the connections between the militarization of France and the Antimilitarism of the Neo-Impressionists, in particular the pacificism of 'Le Douanier' Rousseau.

Drawing upon the recent theories of the French body historian Alein Ehrenberg, this article begins by considering the ramifications of the 1889 Military Law with its establishment of three-year universal conscription and the production of a greater army of citizens to boost France’s military preparedness for war in its colonies and against Germany. Far from its repercussions being of no concern to Neo-Impressionists, this article reveals that it is was the subject of bitter anti-militarist cartoons by Maximilien Luce and anti-militarist paintings by the Neo-Impressionist 'outsider', as he is called 'Le Douanier' Rousseau. Not heroising the patriotic honour of becoming a soldier and the victories of war, as did Eduoard Detaille and other military painters and sculptors aligned with the Salon des Artistes Français, this article establishes that Rousseau and Luce did the opposite. At the height of the military slaughter of families at Fourmies, Rousseau revealed how conscription would transform French citizens into ‘le corps militaire’ allowing them to fight not just against France's arch-enemy Germany with machine-line precision, but against their very own people.