The McGill University Napoleon Collection

Artiste(s):

after Gérard, François, baron (1770-1837)

sc. Boucher-Desnoyers, Auguste-Gaspard-Louis (1779-1857)

Titre anglais composé:

Napoleon the Great.

Titre inscrit:

NAPOLEON LE GRAND

Inscription:

by Desnoyers after Gérard / [Legend:] XXXVII. | NAPOLÉON LE GRAND. | By DESNOYERS. — After GÉRARD. | FRANÇOIS PASCAL GÉRARD, we are told, by straitened circumstances to portrait-painting, which he treated with a | talent so remarkable that no painter of his period approached his reputation and éclat. Personnages opulent or illustrious competed for | the honor of being represented on his canvses, and princes came to pose to the painter of kings. Gérard produced nearly three | hundred portraits, all very fine; among those of Louis XVIII, Louis-Philippe, Hoche, Soult, Canning, Canova, Madame de Staël, Madame Pasta, Talma, and Mlle Mars. | We find in certain annals of the French court a curious story concerning the portrait of Marie Louise, engraved by Desnoyers for | Napoleon. Before the future empress had set foot on French soil her portrait was being sold all over Paris, “in versions each more | ugly that the other.” Eager to stop the circulation of these, Napoleon sent at midnight for Baron Denon, Director-General of the | Imperial Museums, and charged him to see that Desnoyers produced immediately an “official portrait.” “His model, Sire?” said Denon, | — “some picture or description?” “Round head, fair hair, high forehead!” Six words of Napoleon, that must sit for his empress. | At the end of four days Desnoyers had engraved the six words in a likeness of a fair woman, and Denon brought to Napoleon a proof | of the plate. The Emperor, highly pleased, commanded that it should be published without delay. The plate was sent to the printer, | and twenty impressions had been taken when a messenger from the Tuileries brought the engraver an authentic miniature of the lady, | which had just arrived. Desnoyers flew to the printers, and retouched the head of the model, leaving the figure as it was; and on | the following day thousands of impressions were distributed in Paris. | “The portrait of the Earl of Arundel,” says Duplessis, “engraved by Pierre Alexandre Tardieu, after Sir Anthony Van Dyck, suffers | no disparagement by juxtaposition with the best plates produced in France in the seventeenth century; and the portraits of the | Emperor Napoleon I. and prince Talleyrand, engraved by Boucher-Desnoyers in the first years of the Empire, after the famous paintings | of François Gérard, or that of King Louis XVIII, by Massard, also after Gérard, bears witness that the graver's art in France was not | yet in decay.” | The grand portrait by Gérard, of Napoleon in his coronation robes, is in the Gallery of the Luxembourg.

Description:

Full-length portrait of Napoleon in Coronation robes, holding sceptre, in an ornate frame. Based on Gérard's original.

Travail Original:

Napoléon Ier, Empereur des français en grand costume du sacre.

Gérard, François, baron (1770-1837)

1805

. Oil on canvas; 223 x 143 cm; Musée national du château de Versailles et de Trianon.

Sujet(s):

Napoleon I, Emperor of the French (1769-1821)

Coronation (2 December 1804)

Technique:

photogravure