Paintings : 166
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PaintingThe Grenadier de la Garde
In his Abécédaire moral et philosophique à l'usage des grands et des petits enfants (published in 1835 in Paris by Gihaut), Charlet wrote that “the 'grognard' is a 'vieux brave' who is constantly dissatisfied, and is content to remain that way because such a state pleases him”. The sullen expression, as well as the pipe […]
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PaintingNapoleon Bonaparte, First Consul
One of the consequences of the Peace of Amiens in 1802 was that it allowed a number of English to cross over the Channel and visit France again. Like many others, Thomas Erskine (1750-1823) made this journey. He was the third son of the Count of Buchan as well as the first Lord Erskine and […]
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PaintingSupper offered by Emperor Napoleon III to Queen Victoria in the salle de l’Opéra, Château de Versailles, 25 August 1855
Queen Victoria's official visit to Paris, for the opening of the Universal Exhibition in 1855, confirmed the re-establishment of cordial and close relations between France and Britain. A new 'entente' had already begun during the reign of Louis-Philippe, who had invited Victoria to the Château d'Eu in 1843. This visit took on major significance, for […]
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PaintingLouis Napoleon, the prince-president announces to Abd el-Kader his freedom at the Château d’Amboise, 16 October 1852
In December 1847, Abd el-Kader, head of the Algerian resistance to French occupation, was forced to surrender and was imprisoned in France. For four years he was moved between various holding sites in France until finally he was transferred to the Château d’Amboise in November 1848. These years in captivity were difficult for Abd-el-Kader and […]
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PaintingStanding portrait of Napoleon III, in the uniform of Brigadier General, in his Grand Cabinet at the Tuileries
In 1853, Hippolyte Flandrin, a pupil of Ingres's who specialised in religious painting, received an official commission to paint a standing portrait of Napoleon III, although this commission was soon cancelled. The work was to be finished in 1861 and the commission retrospectively regularised by the State in 1862, with 20,000 francs being given to […]
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PaintingThe Woman bathing, known as the Valpinçon woman bathing
Ingres was awarded the Premier prix de Rome in 1801 but had to wait until 1806 before being able to spend four years in Italy. Prize winners were supposed study the works of antiquity and the masterpieces of the Renaissance and then to produce works which would reveal the progress they were making. In 1808, […]
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PaintingThe empress Josephine and her entourage visiting the statue San Carlo Borromeo
Nicolas-Antoine Taunay was a prolific artist, and he painted every theme imaginable. Indeed, although he was to describe himself at the end of his life as a “painter of historical landscapes”, his oeuvre (of more than a thousand paintings) shows that he was much more could be expressed by such a limited classification. Nor did […]
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PaintingNapoleon visiting the battlefield at Eylau, 9 February, 1807
The tragic and bloody Battle of Eylau, with its appalling loss of human life – nearly 50,000 dead and wounded – was, just as Marengo had been before it, the subject of a major propaganda campaign. The aim was on the one hand to confirm the French victory but on the other to guide French […]
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PaintingThe execution of Maximilian
At the same time as the huge Parisian triumph of the Exposition Universelle of 1867, international news arrived, casting a terrible pall over the fête. It was on 1 July, the very day on which the imperial couple were to distribute the prizes, that Paris learned of the execution of Maximilian, the puppet emperor set […]
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PaintingPortrait of a man and his children
This extraordinary family portrait is one of the great enigmas of early 19th-century art history since the identity of the subjects and painter has remained a mystery to this day. The work was initially attributed to David – perhaps because of its undoubtedly exceptional quality of the work – and the father of the family […]