The Sons of Marshal Ney (1810)

Marie-Éléonore Godefroid: The Sons of Marshal Ney

Godefroid (1778-1849) was primarily a portrait painter.  An extensive (and very interesting) article about Godefroid, her life and art, is here. The following bits about the current painting are taken from this article.

This portrait, like all portraits, was designed in hopes of pleasing the patron and was reflective of the artist’s style and aesthetic choices. But it was also a repository for social relations, including the broader relations between groups in this period and the more specific ones, identifiable between the artist, sitters, and matrons or patrons of the work. While this portrait has been read as reflecting an idealized partnership between Marshal Ney and Napoleon, alternate meanings can be generated if read from the perspective of the boys’ mother. It is obvious, but necessary, to state that regardless of the title of the painting, these were the sons of both Neys and the connection to Godefroid arose from relations between Madame Ney and the artist. The work is not then evidence of only the male homosocial relations so visibly and obviously portrayed here, but also of matronage between women that introduced Godefroid into the Ney circle.

With its portrayal of sheathed, heavy swords hanging downward and the boys’ youthful dress, this painting is not, after all, fully committed to portraying boyhood or fraternity as all-powerful; indeed, the dramatic compositional division suggests metaphorical ‘directions’ for the development of future versions of masculinity. Godefroid’s portrait challenges the boundaries of genres and gender: it is a portrait made by a marginal female artist masquerading as a scene of everyday life and which reflects a potentially subversive reading of iconic history paintings by a male artist at the pinnacle of the academic and artistic hierarchy.