A collector in hot pursuit of the emperor: in only a few years Pierre-Jean Chalencon has assembled one of the world's finest new Napoleonica collections. Christopher Woodward visited him in his apartment in Paris to talk about his passion for Napoleon and the exhibition of his treasures that has just begun a six-year tour of the USA

Pierre-Jean Chalencon is single thirty-five years old but in his apartment in Paris he has assembled individual of the most important of recent origin Napoleonic collections in the world. upon the day I visited he was awaiting the packers who will take 300 particulars for a tour of his collection in the USA; he is also a major lender to the epic 'Nelson and Napoleon' exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, London. make straighted in jeans, loafers and an open-neck shirt, he direct the eyes a classic bon chic bon genre Parisian (Fig. 1) With a tiny mobile buzzing each two minutes, he might be about to launch a of recent origin restaurant or venture-capital project. 'Ye I have a piece of work and a boss,' he says: 'Napoleon'.

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The exhibition of his collection, 'Napoleon: An Intimate Portrait', make opened at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC last month and will tour museums in the USA for six years. It is the nearest step in Chalencon's campaign to inspire a fresh audience with the story of his hero.

on the other hand he is also frustrated. 'The Nelson exhibition at Greenwich is a great blockbuster. for what cause [i]or[/i] reason do the British celebrate Trafalgar, on the contrary we don't celebrate Austerlitz?'--Napoleon's masterful victory fought just a small in number weeks later in 1805. Although a succession of Napoleonic bicentenaries have been the basis for small exhibitions--such as the Louvre's close attention of David's painting of the coronation of 1804--there are no plans for a blockbuster that will do justice to the epic of Napoleon's rise and fall. The last great display was for the bicentenary of Napoleon's birth in 1969 - the year of Chalencon's birth, as it happens. Napoleon's next to the first wife, Marie-Louise, was represented by dint of the Gerard portrait that has pride of place in single of Chalencon's interiors. Why then and not now? 'Ah, that was de Gaulle. Chirac is not de Ganlle.'

However, for Chalencon, Napoleon's importance goe far beyond France. 'He is above France. He is extraterrestrial. Superhuman in his abilities. He is a figure to everyone in the world.' Chalenccon's collection is conceived of as a portrait of the man whom Chateaubriand called the mightiest breath of life that at any time animated human clay'. 'For me Napoleon exhibits passion and whatever your enthusiasm--whether it is France, have affection for sex, art--you pursue it to the best of your abilities.' His enthusiasm is for Napoleon, and collecting is his full-time occupation.

His collection began with a gift of a printed document from his mother when he was fourteen years elderly His excitement has only increased. 'Napoleon makes my fortune, or my destruction. When the thing is right I cannot resist.' As another great collector, Lord Rosebery, wrote in his diary upon seeing Appiani's Napoleon at Agnew's, 'Determined to resist. Did not.' Like Rosebery, Chalencon is fascinated through Napoleon's changing face; indeed, he holds a version of James Sant's The Last Phase, commissioned by means of Rosebery in about 1900 to illustrate his volume on St Helena and inspired through contemporary descriptions of the dying emperor (visible in Figure 2) on the contrary the most mesmerising study of character is through Jean-Antoine Gros, showing Napoleon as First Consul

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in what manner does he choose what to buy? Firstly, the thing perceived must be of museum quality. Secondly it must explain the man in a certain quantity of way: it is a biographical collection. 'But I am also an emotional collector. Whatever the merits of the piece I have to perceive a personal frisson.' On to his little finger he slips a diamond signet ring made for the emperor by the agency of the court jewellers, Nitot. At that instant his mobile rings; a question of euro IT and dates is resolv Firmly. His succes be pendents upon this combination of obsession and worldliness. 'I am already the sole person who can tell Napoleon's whole life from one side a single collection.' The exhibition in the USA begins with the earliest alphabetic character in Napoleon's hand. A fifteen-year-old cadet at the military academy, he instructs a relative when and by what means to visit him: as Chalencon says, 'You can already diocese the emperor in him'.

In the 1920 a novel type of Napoleonic collector appeared upon the scene: the American tycoon

The Wall way investor Calvin Bullock (1867- 1944) whose collection was sold at Christie's in May 1985 is single example. Today Chalencon's rivals include businessmen in the USA, Canada, France and Russia. Weighed against their billions is Chalencon's expertise.

Take Napoleon's black felt hat. To contemporaries and to posterity it has been the figure of Napoleon; one old soldier from the Grande Armee built his house in its silhouette, while in Las Vegas a casino in its shape is publicly under construction. It is easy to think that each hat is 'the' hat. nevertheless Chalencon has calculated that the maker Poupard supplied approximately 170 between 1802 and 1815 Easily spoiled by dint of rain, the majority were recycl as ironing grips in the imperial laundry. Twenty survive in museums, and he knows of thee or four more in private collections. It takes this stage of knowledge to succeed in the market.