Paintings

On 1 August, 1798, a month after the landing of French troops in Egypt at Alexandria, the French fleet was completely destroyed by the British Navy in Aboukir Bay, known in English as the Battle of the Nile, the only other significant Franco-British naval engagement of the period (alongside Trafalgar in 1805). Joining battle just […]

It was in in 1804 that Nicolas Frochot, Préfet de la Seine, commissioned the artist Prud'hon to produce a painting for the Criminal Tribunal hall, the high court at the Paris Palais de Justice. The painter came up with two projects, both showing the same four protagonists: Themis (Justice), Nemesis (Divine Vengeance), Crime, the Victim. […]

Although the empress Josephine did not have official painters (David for example was Napoleon's official painter), she nevertheless played an important role in the art world of the day and was the first French sovereign to amass a sizeable collection of paintings. At Malmaison, she had a “petite galerie” (little gallery) installed by Percier and […]

In May 1863, the whole of Paris rushed to the Salon des Refusés, which had been commissioned by the Emperor Napoleon III in response to the many complaints received from artists whose works had be rejected by the jury of the official Salon. One particular work caused a huge scandal, Manet's Le Bain – subsequently […]

In September 1803, the 'Muséum central des arts', renamed the Musée Napoléon (today's Louvre), opened its doors to the public, after a new series of exhibition rooms had been built containing some of the most famous statues from antiquity. It was on a suggestion of Cambacérès, in a letter to Vivant Denon dated 22 June, […]

A remarkable observer of everyday life, portrait painter and genre scene specialist (where anecdote is all), Boilly was a popular artist whose work is valued most of all for its documentary qualities. As an insatiably curious observer of his own time, he recorded for posterity the social customs and quirks of Parisians during the Consulate […]

Eugénie almost worshipped Marie-Antoinette. The tragic end of that 'martyr queen' obsessed the Empress throughout her reign, and especially after the fall of the Second Empire, when Eugénie began strongly to identify herself with her royal predecessor. Indeed the Austrian Queen and the Spanish Empress shared the same destiny, in that they were both non-french […]

When Louis-Philippe founded the Musée Historique du Château de Versailles (The Historical Museum of the Versailles Chateau) in 1837, his express aim was to «consecrate the erstwhile residence of the Louis XIV to the glories of France». Thus built in a spirit of national reconciliation and going beyond the mere commemoration of historical events, the […]

A decidedly independent and provocative artist, Gustave Courbet built his reputation in defiance of the imperial regime. And his success came as much from the scandals which he repeatedly provoked by his paintings at the Salons as with the combative relations which he had with the administrators of French Fine Arts. Through his extraordinary temperament […]

In 1811, whilst still a young student at the Académie de France in Rome, Ingres finished this monumental painting entitled 'Jupiter and Thetis', which he presented at the Paris Salon the following year. The work was a reply to the harsh criticism which his portrait of Napoleon had received at the Salon of 1806. The episode […]