Paintings : 26
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PaintingPortrait of the Roi de Rome
Picking up his quill after viewing the Portrait de S.M. le Roi de Rome, one of three paintings exhibited at the Salon of 1812 by Prud’hon, the well-known writer Charles Paul Landon* was moved to offer his own textual reproduction of the work: “The august child is depicted without clothes, asleep in the grass. His head […]
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PaintingMarie Louise
After the definitive defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna made Marie Louise (1791-1847) life duchess of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. The new sovereign, who Italianised her name to Maria Luigia, gave sensitive support to the arts during her 30-year reign, just as she had done as empress of France. This painting probably dates from the […]
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PaintingBust portrait of Empress Marie-Louise
Sold following the death of Baron Gérard, 27 – 29 April 1837; Collection La Caze, Paris; bequeathed to the Musée du Louvre, 1869. Gérard took his first steps at the 1791 Salon as a history painter but quickly established himself in the portrait genre. During the Empire period, he was the official portraitist to the imperial aristocracy and it […]
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PaintingThe religious marriage of Napoleon I and Marie-Louise in the Salon Carré at the Louvre, on 2 April, 1810
Napoleon I and Marie-Louise of Austria were married before God in a ‘chapel’ created by architects Percier and Fontaine out of the Salon Carré at the Louvre on 2 April, 1810. The wedding procession and cortege had to walk all the way from the Tuileries palace, down a great part of the Grande Galerie in […]
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PaintingThe emperor visiting the flood victims in Tarascon (June 1856)
Fro, the ancients on, history painting was considered art’s noblest genre. And this opinion held good through the Renaissance right up to the end of the Second Empire. It had become the type of art that we would nowadays call ‘documentary’, though the scenes were often carefully staged. The public demanded modern subjects, often from current affairs, almost newspaper snapshots. […]
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PaintingThe Empress Eugenie surrounded by her ladies in waiting
Official portraitist for the royal courts of Europe, Franz-Xavier Winterhalter was the favourite painter of the Empress Eugenie. Indeed, Eugenie most probably used her own personal fortune to pay for this renowned collective portrait representing the sovereign in 1855 surrounded by her ladies in waiting. Hung in Fontainebleau Palace during the Second Empire, the work […]