CIRCA 1820

This bust is inspired by Antonio Canova's (d.1822) sculpture of Napoleon as Premier Consul (1802-3), the laurel crown being a later addition (Fred Licht, Canova, Abbeville Press, New York 1983, pp.99-101). Canova's most celebrated work in England was the heroic statue of Napoleon, 'the peace-bearing War God' (1803), which George, Prince Regent, later King George IV, presented in 1816 to Arthur, Duke of Wellington (now displayed at Apsley House, London). This impressive bust of the laurel-wreathed Emperor recalls the magisterial portrait of the enthroned Napoleon, which was exhibited by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres at the 1806 Salon. (see H.Bessis, Ingres et le portrait de l'Empereur, Archives de l'art français, XXIV (1969), pp.89-90). It also recalls a bust commissioned in 1808, when Dominique Vivant Denon (d.1825), Director of the Musie Napoléon (Louvre), was intending to transform the museum's antique statue of Trajan into one of Napoleon. (G.Hubert, 'L'Oeuvre de Pierre Cartellier', Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1980, pp.1-44).