Monument to French Mothers: a Controversial Parisian Tribute

The Monument to French Mothers is one of these places in Paris that tourist circuits and guidebooks are overlooking. Tucked away in its namesake garden at 21 Boulevard Kellermann, it’s one of those monumental works you walk past without really seeing. It is lost between Porte d’Italie and Parc Kellermann, in this 13th arrondissement that was once Victor Hugo’s Paris of the Misérables (the wretched). It was the haunt of the Thénardiers and Marius Pontmercy.

Monument to French Mothers: story of a controversial tribute

The Monument to French Mothers, born in the interwar years

The Popular Front, which came to power in France in 1936, amplified the family and natalist policies of previous governments. In this context, it decided to erect a monument in Paris dedicated to French mothers, created in 1938, to encourage French birth rates by honouring mothers, particularly those who had to raise their children alone after their husbands died in the First World War.

The architect Paul Bigot designed the garden and the monument, which he titled the Monument to French Mothers. The sculptures were carved in Euville stone (Meuse) by Henri Bouchard and Alexandre Descatoire. The garden was inaugurated on 25th October 1938 by the President of the French Republic, Albert Lebrun.

The inauguration didn’t go smoothly. Women from the League of Women’s Rights protested to demand voting rights for women, for “French mothers, sublime… but not yet voters”, and wanted to lay a wreath, but were dispersed by the thirty or so police officers present. This moment highlighted the monument’s inherent ambiguity: celebrating mothers whilst denying them full citizenship.

Stalinist aesthetics

Photographing the monument in early summer 2025, I found myself confronting an aesthetic question. The monument, about ten metres wide, is, according to Wikipedia, in the Stalinist style. This assessment isn’t unfounded on formal grounds. You find here that same determination to glorify the people, to magnify the maternal figure, to impose a single reading of the work. Bouchard and Descatoire’s mothers, draped in their simple clothes, gaze towards the future in a way that recalls the heroic kolkhoz workers of Soviet art.

Figures of sacrificial motherhood

On the slab is engraved the inscription “TO FRENCH MOTHERS”, accompanied by texts from Albert Lebrun and Edmond Labbé, as well as a verse from Victor Hugo’s Feuilles d’automne (Autumn Leaves):

“Oh, a mother’s love, a love that none forgets”.

Victor Hugo knew this neighbourhood well. It’s in this part of the 13th, at the corner of Boulevard de l’Hôpital and Rue des Vignes de l’Hôpital, that he places the Gorbeau tenement in Les Misérables, the Thénardiers’ lair and Marius’s place of residence.

Here is the transcription of Labbé’s text:

To French Mothers

Before the Monument to French Mothers will parade, without concern for party or creed, all those French people filled with optimism and idealism whose hearts will have beaten at the thought of maternal sacrifice

Edmond Labbé

A Popular Front monument

This work needs to be placed in its political context. 1938 marks the end of the Popular Front, that left-wing alliance that profoundly shaped French society. The Monument to French Mothers fits into this desire to recognise the people, to celebrate the working classes—those working-class, peasant and employed mothers who paid the heaviest price for the war. This social dimension perhaps explains why the monument was relegated to the margins of Paris, in this peripheral 13th arrondissement, far from the circuits of monumental, bourgeois Paris. As if this tribute to the mothers of the people had to remain in working-class neighbourhoods, where Hugo had already placed his Misérables a century earlier.

A historic controversy

Very quickly, the monument became embarrassing. During the Second World War, under the Vichy regime, Mother’s Day was celebrated there, which led to a communist counter-demonstration on 31st May 1942. The monument’s instrumentalisation by Vichy marked it permanently. After the Second World War, the monument was deemed too “Pétainist” and sparked controversy.

For a long time, the garden only opened for Mother’s Day, as explained in this article from Le Parisien. In recent years, the garden has been open all year-round thanks to the efforts of the deputy mayor and councillor for the 13th arrondissement, Yves Contassot, and hosts various neighbourhood events (photo exhibitions, concerts, gardening workshops).

Photographing oblivion

In black and white, and with the benefit of historical hindsight, my feelings are mixed. The glorification of motherhood, whether Stalinist or Vichyist, is no longer relevant in this era of European demographic decline. Between sincere celebration of maternal sacrifice and political instrumentalisation of the mother figure, between working-class humanism and authoritarian aesthetics, the Monument to French Mothers has become an ambiguous artistic object, as fascinating as it is puzzling.

Yet it’s one of those anti-museums where history reveals itself without gloss, in all its complexity and grey areas. A place where Victor Hugo’s Paris meets that of the Popular Front, where the stone ages and cracks like our relationship with this history that we don’t know what to think of, and which so many of us seem to have forgotten.

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All photographs were taken in June 2025

Further reading:

• Garden of the Monument to French Mothers — Wikipedia article
• Henri Bouchard, sculptor
• Alexandre Descatoire, sculptor
• Paul Bigot, architect
• The 13th arrondissement and its heritage to be restored in 2025

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Yann Gourvennec

I'm a photographer and watercolourist. I have practiced photography since childhood and digital photography since 1995. I turned it into my main occupation in 2021. I own a photo studio in Paris, France.
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Je suis photographe et aquarelliste. Je pratique la photographie depuis l'enfance et la photographie numérique depuis 1995. J'en ai fait mon activité principale en 2021. Je possède un studio photo dans le 15e arrondissement de Paris

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