Paintings

The Palais des Tuileries A few months after the fall of the Second Empire and the establishment of the Third Republic, Paris, the so-called City of Light, was lit up by the fires of a popular insurrection. The Communards [e.g. the Parisian insurgents], knowing they were…

On 11 December 1848, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected (the first, and only) President of the Second Republic, by universal male suffrage. It was from the Elysée-National (the Elysée Palace, chosen by the Assembly to be the official residence of the President of the Republic) that the future Emperor prepared the coup d’etat of 2 December […]

In August 1797, the future Grand Master of the Imperial University, Jean-Pierre-Louis de Fontanes, wrote a letter praising the young general Bonaparte to the skies. “It is said”, he enthused, “that you always have a copy of Ossian in your pocket – even in the midst of battles”. The sixteen-year-old Lamartine wrote of his own […]

In 1810, Parisians and tourists to the French capital had the privilege of visiting this beautiful square, at whose centre stood the majestic Fontaine du Palmier commemorating the victories of Napoleon’s Grande Armée. Until 1802, the scene had been dominated by the Grand Châtelet, a 9th century fortress reconstructed in stone and extended in the […]

This pen, ink and watercolour drawing depicts the rear façade of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame (referred to at the time as the Metropolitan Church of Paris) as it appeared on 2 December 1804 for the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor of the French. The east end of Notre-Dame has been augmented with a rotunda, […]

Turning off the Rue Chantereine in October 1795 and continuing down a long driveway formed by the walls of the adjacent properties, Napoleon Bonaparte would have found himself at the modest private residence in which Marie-Joseph-Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie lived. Their romantic entanglement began within these walls (appropriately enough, since Josephine was renting […]

Edouard Riou (1833-1900) was a Pre-Impressionist painter, a renowned illustrator of books by Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas, and a contributor to the weekly newspaper Le tour du monde, and in 1870, at the request of Ferdinand de Lesseps, he created a souvenir album of the Empress’ voyage undertaken for the inauguration of the Suez […]

This canvas is one of a series of preparatory studies that Boilly carried out in preparation for L’Atelier d’un sculpteur. Tableau de Famille. The painting, better known today as L’Atelier de Houdon, was unveiled at the Salon of 1804 and is today held in the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris. This particular work, completed […]

On 14 August, 1857, the formal inauguration of the “Nouveau Louvre” took place. This new-look Louvre was in actual fact the amalgamation into a single unified palatial complex of the Louvre and the Palais des Tuileries, an accomplishment that confirmed Napoleon III arrival amongst the ranks of the great French monarchs. “The completion of the […]