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Elizabeth A.Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Jeanne Manon Roland

b. 1754, Paris; d. 1793, Paris

This person is commonly known as JEANNE-MARIE ROLAND.

Deeply involved in the French Revolution, Jeanne-Marie Roland began by writing political articles for the newspaper Courrier de Lyon. She also established a salon in Paris that quickly became a meeting place for leaders of the moderate Girondin faction. In 1793, Jeanne and her husband, Jean-Marie Roland, were arrested when, with her encouragement, he publicly attacked Robespierre. While imprisoned, she wrote her memoirs, Appel à l’impartiale postérité (Appeal to Impartial Posterity). A few months later, she was convicted of royalist sympathies and sent to the guillotine, uttering her famous last words, “Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”