Paintings

Of all the portraits of Bonaparte, very few works represent him at the chateau de Malmaison. The most emblematic of them is this 1802 drawing by Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855) from the collection of the Musée National des châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau.

This small black and white postcard is a photograph of a painting (now lost) by Horace Vernet, painted in July 1821 immediately after learning of the death, two months earlier, of Napoleon I. Vernet was a fervent Bonapartist and his best-known Napoleonic works are Napoleon I reviewing…

This painting, one of the best-known representations of Emperor Napoleon I, was Ingres’ second portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte. The promising young student of David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), was one of several artists to receive an official commission to portray Napoleon dressed in one of the many different Coronation robes that the Emperor wore during the […]

The title of this work is a quotation from the Emperor’s last will and testament, indeed it is one of its most quoted lines: “It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well”.   For this […]

The Comte de Las Cases described the configuration of the rooms at Longwood House in the Memorial as follows: “The entrance to the house was through a room which had just been built, and which was intended to answer the double purpose of an anti-chamber and a dining-room. This apartment led to another, which was […]

When the Scottish painter William Quiller Orchardson exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1892, he was sixty years old and had established a long career, which began at the age of fifteen when he entered Edinburgh’s renowned art school, the Trustees’ Academy. Orchardson was a talented portrait artist but one of his favourite […]

In this full-length portrait of Napoleon, Charles Lock Eastlake represents the deposed Emperor, dressed in the green uniform of a colonel of the “chasseurs à cheval de la Garde”, on the bridge of Bellerophon which he had boarded on 15 July 1815, ultimately putting his fate in the hands of the British Prince Regent, after […]

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, […]

Seated on the great throne at the west end of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Napoleon raises his right hand to swear his constitutional oath. To his right, in a smaller throne, is Josephine. They are surrounded by princes, dignitaries and generals who all turn their attention to this dramatic gesture. It is 2 December 1804, […]

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 […]