Paintings : 20
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Painting / Directory / 1st Empire1814, The French Campaign
Ernest Meissonier is famous for his military paintings, and he soon attracted a following fascinated by his care for detail and the realism of his uniforms. And one of his most famous paintings, 1814, the French Campaign, singlehandedly revolutionised the genre of war painting. For there he concentrates not on the action and the fighting […]
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PaintingThe Battle of Marengo
The French Revolutionary Wars enabled Swebach to practise his talent as a draughtsman very early on, sketching from life, in pencil or ink, scenes which were then reworked in wash or watercolour. The Napoleonic campaigns next offered him multiple subjects and, abandoning the military anecdote for a while, he made a little foray into historical […]
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PaintingBonaparte crossing the Great St Bernard Pass
The relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte and Jacques-Louis David was tumultuous, but we tend to think rather of the images the latter made of the former, which helped the cause of the general, First Consul then Emperor during fifteen years of power. David started this portrait following the failure of a first monumental portrait which was […]
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PaintingJean-Antoine Houdon sculpting the bust of First Consul Bonaparte
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 […]
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PaintingOedipus
Towards the end of the Second Empire, the legend of Napoleon began to take hold of Jean-Léon Gérôme, who proceeded to extract from the mythical Egyptian campaign such subjects that could be combined with his love for Orientalism. With the hundredth anniversary of Napoleon’s birth approaching (1869), in 1867 the artist rather appropriately came to […]
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PaintingWar. The Exile and the Rock Limpet
Turner’s work was often inspired by the Anglo-French conflicts of the Napoleonic period. The Battle of Trafalgar is depicted in his work from 1806 (Tate Gallery), and in 1822, he was commissioned by King George IV to produce a new painting on the subject (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich). The ships that participated in the battle, […]
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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 Apotheosis of Napoleon I
After the coup d’état in 1851, Ingres, a partisan of the new government, made no effort to hide his support for Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. His admiration for the nephew of Napoleon I, and his support for the imperial regime saw him receive and accept a commission which was probably made through the Prince Napoleon. On 2 […]
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PaintingNapoleon in his study at the Tuileries
On 3 August, 1811, the wealthy Scot, Alexander, Marquis of Douglas – who was to become the tenth Duke of Hamilton in 1819 – wrote to David commissioning from him a portrait of Napoleon. “… You have graciously chosen my brush through which to transfer onto canvas the features of the Great Man and to […]
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PaintingGeneral Bonaparte and his chief of staff, General Berthier, at the Battle of Marengo
The victory at Marengo was celebrated in many different works of art, both paintings and sculptures, some commissioned and giving the official propaganda, and others the personal initiative of artists with an eye to the main chance hoping to attract the favourable influence of the victor and new master of France. This huge painting here […]