Jean-Léon Gérôme: Napoleon and his General Staff in Egypt
The painting Napoleon and His General Staff in Egypt depicts Napoleon and his troops riding camels through the desert, accompanied by several Bedouins on horseback. According to the writer Earl Shinn, who included a photogravure of the painting in his book Gérôme, A Collection of the Works of J. L. Gérôme in One Hundred Photogravures, the somber general is retreating from the bloody and failed siege of Acre, Syria: 'mounted on his ungainly beast of burden, in this burning and dreary march... with his discontented and defeated army around him...[Napoleon] experiences, for the first time, the bitterness of disappointed ambition.' [Christie's]
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