Saturday, June 7, 2014

An Invalid Submitting a Petition to Napoleon (1838)

Horace Vernet: An Invalid Submitting a Petition to Napoleon 
at a Parade in the Courtyard of the Tuileries Palace

This painting was produced in July 1838 at the request of Emperor Nicholas I who suggested the subject and asked that the composition includes the episode with the invalid presenting a petition to Napoleon. "This paining will stay in my study. I want to have the Imperial Guard always before my eyes, because it could have smashed us," said Nicholas I, giving instructions on where the new painting was to hang in the Winter Palace. In all likelihood, the canvas depicts one of the parades of 1808 or 1809. It presents famous Napoleonic generals including Duroc and Lasalle, Lannes and Murat, Ney and Brune, Bessières and Berthier, Andoche Junot and Eugène Beauharnais, Mortier and Dorsenne, Combes and Lefevre. [Hermitage]

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