Lot Essay
A fine, rather finished oil sketch (oil on panel, 8¼ x 13 in, 21 x 33 cm) is in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
"A devouring thirst, a total lack of water, excessive heat and an exhausting march among burning hot dunes demoralized the men, and made all generous sentiments secede to the most cruel egoism. I saw amputated officers whose transport was in order, who had even paid for their portage, thrown from their stretchers. I saw abandoned amputees, the wounded and those suffering from the plague (or even suspected of being so) thrown into the fields (along the way)...The sun, in all its power in the clear sky, was obscured by the smoke of the fires we set...behind us the desert that we had made, before us the privations and the sufferings that awaited us." (Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Mémoires, 1829-1831; vol. 2, p.262)
After the absolute check of his northward conquest by the British forces at he fortress of St. Jean d'Acre (present day Accho, just north of Haifa), General Bonaparte and the Army of the Revolution retreated south along the Mediterranean coast, then across northern Sinai, towards Cairo. The fruitless, three months long siege of the fortress at Acre had cost the French four thousand men, a full third of Napoleon's army. The retreat was at first encumbered with over 1200 wounded and sick, most of whom were lost upon the way. In Gérôme's painting, General Bonaparte and the remnants of the Army of the Revolution have finally reached the arid and sandy plains of Egypt; they are thoroughly discouraged, and deeply demoralized; for the first time the young general himself felt doubt in his heart, not about himself, but about the worth of the Egyptian campaign to his career.
His general staff, riding behind him, can only think of its misery, perhaps back to the defeat at St. Jean d'Acre three months before, but certainly ahead to the immediate difficulties of the next few days. Only Bonaparte seems above the misery; he looks ahead. We might think he is already planning to abandon his army and return to greater political opportunities in France. Frédéric Masson, a good friend of Gérôme's, suspects him of an even greater megalomania: "...the thought one reads upon this emaciated face is evidently far from the desert. It has left the body and, while the eyes fixedly regard the horizon, it goes on crossing rivers, climbing mountains, traversing seas. Bonaparte is no longer on the road to Syria, he is on the way to India! He hesitates between these two halves of the world which he holds in his hands; he ponders upon the fate of Alexander and of Caesar; he asks himself if Asia, to which he holds the key (Egypt), is worth this Europe from whence he comes; and unconscious of human suffering, his dream embraces the universe."
Masson was an amateur expert on Napoleon, and a life-long intimate of Gérôme. Hering, who translated this passage for her biography of the painter, worked with Gérôme while preparing the book. Her citation of Masson's interpretation gives it a doubled authority. However, in looking at the ambitious general as he plots his personal future even in the midst of a most disastrous present, we can form another likely interpretation: this overly ambitious young man left havoc behind as he came down the coast of Palestine to Egypt, and the plans he is now forming in his head will next bring havoc to Europe.
The central triangle of this geometrically complex composition--for its elements literally ride off in several directions--is held down by the figure of the general's personal dragoman, marching on foot beside him. He is splendidly dressed, befitting the rank of his master, and looks up at him, while stepping forward, with unquestioning admiration. His costume is gorgeous, wonderful, bright. It sets off the series of nuances of bright colors through the group of the general staff riding behind the future First Consul; the decorations of the saddles, their scarves, their beautifully painted white gloves and their firm legs under their taut white breeches. Gérôme has put in a myriad observations here, from the jolly jangling tassels to physiognomies of utmost suffering. Even the rocks, and the outbreaks of stony ground between them, are painted, with full attention to volume, texture and light.
It is no exaggeration to say that everything is beautifully painted in this picture: from the great sand clouds stirred up by the feet of the troops and their steeds as they march across the desert, to the costumes of the soldiers and Arabs, and the decorations of the saddles. Gérôme dispatches the dust into the crowd with finesse, a remarkable sense of space or placement, and we must say, with masterful control of values: observe the accuracy of the gradually dust-occluded colors of the mounted figures on the right side of the canvas. The dust, a tangible atmosphere, builds the space--as between the troops or among the legs of the steeds--as well as making palpable the deep discomfort of the accompanying generals.
This is a major work by Gérôme. Now that it has been rediscovered--after almost seventy years in obscurity--it should join the set of images that Gérôme's works have made part of our collective imagination: Pollice Verso, L'Eminence grise, The Duel after the Ball, The Slave Market, The Death of Caesar, and The Prisoner
We are grateful to Professor Gerald Ackerman for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
"A devouring thirst, a total lack of water, excessive heat and an exhausting march among burning hot dunes demoralized the men, and made all generous sentiments secede to the most cruel egoism. I saw amputated officers whose transport was in order, who had even paid for their portage, thrown from their stretchers. I saw abandoned amputees, the wounded and those suffering from the plague (or even suspected of being so) thrown into the fields (along the way)...The sun, in all its power in the clear sky, was obscured by the smoke of the fires we set...behind us the desert that we had made, before us the privations and the sufferings that awaited us." (Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Mémoires, 1829-1831; vol. 2, p.262)
After the absolute check of his northward conquest by the British forces at he fortress of St. Jean d'Acre (present day Accho, just north of Haifa), General Bonaparte and the Army of the Revolution retreated south along the Mediterranean coast, then across northern Sinai, towards Cairo. The fruitless, three months long siege of the fortress at Acre had cost the French four thousand men, a full third of Napoleon's army. The retreat was at first encumbered with over 1200 wounded and sick, most of whom were lost upon the way. In Gérôme's painting, General Bonaparte and the remnants of the Army of the Revolution have finally reached the arid and sandy plains of Egypt; they are thoroughly discouraged, and deeply demoralized; for the first time the young general himself felt doubt in his heart, not about himself, but about the worth of the Egyptian campaign to his career.
His general staff, riding behind him, can only think of its misery, perhaps back to the defeat at St. Jean d'Acre three months before, but certainly ahead to the immediate difficulties of the next few days. Only Bonaparte seems above the misery; he looks ahead. We might think he is already planning to abandon his army and return to greater political opportunities in France. Frédéric Masson, a good friend of Gérôme's, suspects him of an even greater megalomania: "...the thought one reads upon this emaciated face is evidently far from the desert. It has left the body and, while the eyes fixedly regard the horizon, it goes on crossing rivers, climbing mountains, traversing seas. Bonaparte is no longer on the road to Syria, he is on the way to India! He hesitates between these two halves of the world which he holds in his hands; he ponders upon the fate of Alexander and of Caesar; he asks himself if Asia, to which he holds the key (Egypt), is worth this Europe from whence he comes; and unconscious of human suffering, his dream embraces the universe."
Masson was an amateur expert on Napoleon, and a life-long intimate of Gérôme. Hering, who translated this passage for her biography of the painter, worked with Gérôme while preparing the book. Her citation of Masson's interpretation gives it a doubled authority. However, in looking at the ambitious general as he plots his personal future even in the midst of a most disastrous present, we can form another likely interpretation: this overly ambitious young man left havoc behind as he came down the coast of Palestine to Egypt, and the plans he is now forming in his head will next bring havoc to Europe.
The central triangle of this geometrically complex composition--for its elements literally ride off in several directions--is held down by the figure of the general's personal dragoman, marching on foot beside him. He is splendidly dressed, befitting the rank of his master, and looks up at him, while stepping forward, with unquestioning admiration. His costume is gorgeous, wonderful, bright. It sets off the series of nuances of bright colors through the group of the general staff riding behind the future First Consul; the decorations of the saddles, their scarves, their beautifully painted white gloves and their firm legs under their taut white breeches. Gérôme has put in a myriad observations here, from the jolly jangling tassels to physiognomies of utmost suffering. Even the rocks, and the outbreaks of stony ground between them, are painted, with full attention to volume, texture and light.
It is no exaggeration to say that everything is beautifully painted in this picture: from the great sand clouds stirred up by the feet of the troops and their steeds as they march across the desert, to the costumes of the soldiers and Arabs, and the decorations of the saddles. Gérôme dispatches the dust into the crowd with finesse, a remarkable sense of space or placement, and we must say, with masterful control of values: observe the accuracy of the gradually dust-occluded colors of the mounted figures on the right side of the canvas. The dust, a tangible atmosphere, builds the space--as between the troops or among the legs of the steeds--as well as making palpable the deep discomfort of the accompanying generals.
This is a major work by Gérôme. Now that it has been rediscovered--after almost seventy years in obscurity--it should join the set of images that Gérôme's works have made part of our collective imagination: Pollice Verso, L'Eminence grise, The Duel after the Ball, The Slave Market, The Death of Caesar, and The Prisoner
We are grateful to Professor Gerald Ackerman for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.