# The Battle of the "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama" [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [MANET, Edouard]() - Date: 1851-1900 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 134 x 127 cm ## Commentary In the fertile years that followed his Déjeuner and Olympia, Manet experimented very widely. Sometimes he focused on giving form to colour and movement in works like the Bullfight, at others he was inspired by contemporary events, such as the Battle of the "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama" off Cherbourg. This episode of the American Civil War made a considerable impression on public opinion. The work testified to Manet's modernity, but was also an attempt to renew the theme of naval combat traditional in Dutch painting. It is, in fact, a battle between colour and light, where the blacks and the few dots of red enhance the tumultuous green of the waves. ## Related artworks - [A Bar at the Folies-Bergère \(detail\)]() - [A Bar at the Folies-Bergère]() - [A Matador \(Matador Saluting\)]() - [Argenteuil]() - [At Longchamp Racecourse]() - [At Père Lathuille]() - [At the Café \(Bock Drinkers\)]() - [At the Café]() - [Baudelaire Bareheaded, Full Face]() - [Baudelaire with Hat, in Profile]() - [Baudelaire's Mistress Reclining]() - [Bench in the Garden at Versailles]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()