Delaroche, Napoleon and English collectors

To celebrate the bicentenary this month of the Battle of Trafalgar, this special issue of APOLLO is devot to Napoleon and collectors of Napoleonica. We begin with an examination by the agency of Stephen Bann of the four portraits of the emperor by dint of Paul Delaroche. As their appeal to English patrons and collectors reveals, they swiftly attained canonical status, thanks to their penetrating analysis of character and historical circumstance--despite the fact that Delaroche may not at any time have set eyes on Napoleon.

There are three reasons wherefore Paul Delaroche's portraits of Napoleon posses a special interest. The first, and the main semblance for this article, is that versions of all of them passed [i]or[/i] part of to the other the hands of English patrons at an early stage. The debate above the dating and consequent priority of a certain quantity of of these versions is still actual much an open one. Delaroche was for a decade or in the way that in the mid-nineteenth century perhaps the greatest in quantity famous (and consequently the greatest in quantity collected) painter of the day, attracting patrons quite through Europe and beyond. The fact that he was closely allied with individual of the most enterprising dealers of the period, the Maison Goupil, and with equal reason helped to fuel their trade in 'repetitions' and 'reductions' of his major works, has made it extremely difficult in a certain number of cases to identify the 'original'. However there can be no ambiguities in the history of the first portrait of all (Fig. 2) This was commissioned through an Anglo-Irish peeress, the dowager Countes of Sandwich, in circumstances to be explained.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

The next to the first point to be recalled is that these images of Napoleon rapidly achieved an unusual status. Although the first was complet above twenty years after the Emperor left Europe for beneficial they were gradually admitted among the canonical portraits painted during his lifetime by means of such artists as David and Ingres. The lingering issues of this assimilation are still apparent today, when newspapers oftentimes choose agency reproductions of Delaroche's works for a generic image of the Emperor to illustrate a review or article. (1) In the nineteenth hundred however, the apparent veracity of the portraits was attested by dint of people who had seen Napoleon in his prime. The 6th Duke of Portland wrote of the oval version of Napoleon at Fontainebleau holded by his family that it had mightily impressed the Duc de Coigny when he saw it for the first time: he had asserted that 'he at no time saw such a likeness, that it is the Emperor himself! he almost screamed when he saw Napoleon'. (2) Coigny was a member of the elderly military aristocracy, born in 1788 who had remained in France completely through the revolution and joined the imperial army in 1805 In the emperor's service for ten years, and a survivor of the Russian campaign, he would have had ample opportunity to eye him.

This was not the case with Delaroche himself, who was born in 1797 and with equal reason barely adult by the time of Waterloo. nevertheless his nineteenth-century patrons could not relinquish the idea that he must at a certain number of point have set eyes upon his mighty model. Again, the Duke of Portland allowed that 'there is no trial that the Emperor ever sat to this painter', on the contrary averred: 'it is certain that he visited the studio of Baron Gro when Delaroche was a pupil there'. (3) In fact, nothing could be les certain. Delaroche did indeed go into the studio of Gros, and was listed as his pupil through early 1817. But by that stage Napoleon had drawn out ago departed for St Helena. A slightly more plausible version of the collision was floated as early as 1842 in the Illustrated London novels when an engraving of the Sandwich portrait had newly been published in London. This claims that: 'The head of this portrait was painted by the agency of De La Roche during the hundr days, and finished by dint of him afterwards, by desire of the Buonaparte family'. (4) There is no particular reason wherefore the youthful Delaroche should not have been upon the alert with his sketch-book and paint brush in 1815 nevertheless the tale is unsupported through other evidence, and should perhaps be regarded as a answer to the portrait's lively result rather than a guide to its genesis.

What the same article demonstrates, all the same, is the contemporary opinion that this comparative latecomer had wiped without all its competitors. 'The portrait of Napoleon is an identity of the man in somebody and character. De la Roche has read his subdue more accurately than any of the artists of all nations, flat with Canova at their head, who have given to the world their various semblances of this extraordinary man.' (5) similar a comment invites scepticism nowadays. in what way many of the now well-known contemporary portraits of Napoleon could the writer have seen when flat the Sandwich painting had to be discussed by the agency of way of Aristide Louis's reproductive print, and the rather botched forest-land engraving after the print that the Illustrated London novels had commissioned to accompany their article? at the same time the point could, and undoubtedly should, be turned around. The galvanising consequence of Delaroche's image was evidently not pendent on the sight of an 'original' work, on the other hand also communicated itself through copies of copies. Whether autograph or not, its 'aura' was eminently transferable. (6)