Objects

This bronze – also known as “Le réveil de Napoléon” (Napoleon awakes) – is by the sculptor François Rude and was commissioned in early 1840 by Claude Noisot, a former grenadier-à-pied and captain of the Old Guard. This military man was a faithful devotee of the Emperor, and had participated in the campaigns in Austria […]

The majority of glassware for the Maison de l’Empereur or Imperial Household came from the Montcenis crystal manufacturer. The Montcenis firm, established in 1787, had been the official crystal manufacturers to the monarch during the Ancien Régime, and they would play a significant role in the development of the French glass- and crystalware industry. So […]

After Napoleon’s death on 5 May 1821, a secular cult began to grow around him, propagated by the testimonies of the men and women who had accompanied him to St. Helena. At the same time iconography in which Napoleon was compared to the mythological Prometheus became popular. The Napoleonic cult peaked at the time of […]

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 1819, the anatomist, Francesco Antommarchi (1789-1838), was sent to St Helena as a doctor. He assisted the British physician Burton, who having found gypsum on the island, was able to take a death mask of the Emperor in several sections. Bertrand and Antommarchi took the central part (eyes, nose, mouth). This original mask, almost […]

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 […]

These eight pages of writing, covered in the impatient scribbles of a man determined to learn the language of his captors, are some of the most evocative documents we have from Napoleon’s time on Saint Helena. His arrival on the British outpost in October 1815 heralded an exile that was not only geographic, but also […]