''Bonaparte, First Consul'' (''Bonaparte, Premier Consul'') is an 1804 portrait of
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
Bonaparte as
First Consul
The Consulate (french: Le Consulat) was the top-level Government of France from the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire on 10 November 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire on 18 May 1804. By extension, the term ''The Co ...
by
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( , ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ...
. The painting is now in the collection of the
Curtius Museum
The Curtius Museum (''Musée Curtius'') is a museum of archaeology and decorative arts, located on the bank of the river Meuse in Liège, Belgium, classified as a ''Major Heritage'' of Wallonia.
It was built sometime between 1597 and 1610 as a ...
in
Liège. Posing
the hand inside the waistcoat was often used in portraits of rulers to indicate calm and stable leadership.
Background
On 1 August 1803 Bonaparte stopped in
Liège for two days on his triumphal march across the nine annexed départements. On the terrace of a
hôtel particulier
An ''hôtel particulier'' () is a grand townhouse, comparable to the British townhouse or mansion. Whereas an ordinary ''maison'' (house) was built as part of a row, sharing party walls with the houses on either side and directly fronting on a s ...
on the
Mont-Saint-Martin, Bonaparte contemplated the city, criticising the
église Saint-Jean-en-l’Isle, ordering a bell tower (which it still lacked) for the new
cathédrale Saint-Paul and approved the siting of the
fort de la Chartreuse.
[Heuse 1936, p. 41.] A large crowd (the city's population having tripled during the two days of the visit) gathered to acclaim Bonaparte and some even knelt in his path.
The city's head of state met Bonaparte in the Amercœur quarter, which had been devastated by Austrian bombardment on leaving the city in 1794 after the
battle of Sprimont
The Battle of Sprimont, or Battle of the Ourthe (18 Sep 1794), was a battle during the War of the First Coalition between a corps of the French revolutionary Army of Sambre-and-Meuse under General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, and the left wing of an ...
. Deeply impressed by the inhabitants' misery, Bonaparte decreed 300,000 francs to the prefect of
Ourthe
The Ourthe (; Walloon: ''Aiwe d' Oûte'') is a long river in the Ardennes in Wallonia (Belgium). It is a right tributary to the river Meuse. The Ourthe is formed at the confluence of the ''Ourthe Occidentale'' (Western Ourthe) and the ''Ourthe ...
, baron
Micoud d'Umons, for the suburb's reconstruction. The same evening, Bonaparte told the
Second Consul "I am extremely content at the spirit of the inhabitants of Liège".
To show his satisfaction, Bonaparte announced his intention to offer the city of Liège a portrait of him by Ingres, which would be sent to them a year later. Ingres—who had made his debut at the
Salon the previous year—thus became one of five artists (the others were
Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (, 21 August 1725 – 4 March 1805) was a French painter of portraits, genre scenes, and history painting.
Biography Early life
Greuze was born at Tournus, a market town in Burgundy. He is generally said to have formed h ...
,
Robert Lefèvre
Robert Jacques François Faust Lefèvre (, 24 September 1755, in Bayeux – 3 October 1830, in Paris) was a French painter of portraits, history paintings and religious paintings. He was heavily influenced by Jacques-Louis David and his style i ...
,
Charles Meynier, and
Marie-Guillemine Benoist
Marie-Guillemine Benoist, born Marie-Guillemine de Laville-Leroux (December 18, 1768 – October 8, 1826), was a French neoclassical, historical, and genre painter.
Biography
Benoist was born in Paris, the daughter of a civil servant. Her trai ...
) who were commissioned to paint full-length portraits of Napoleon to be distributed to the prefectural towns of Liège,
Antwerp,
Dunkerque,
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
, and
Ghent
Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded i ...
, all of which were newly ceded to France in the 1801
Treaty of Lunéville
The Treaty of Lunéville (or Peace of Lunéville) was signed in the Treaty House of Lunéville on 9 February 1801. The signatory parties were the French Republic and Emperor Francis II, who signed on his own behalf as ruler of the hereditary doma ...
.
[Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 46.]
Interpretation
Ingres was 23 when he received the commission for the painting from the city of
Liège. He was unable to get Bonaparte to sit for it and had to base the pose on a portrait of him from 1802 by
Antoine-Jean Gros. Ingres' painting shows its subject aged 34 with his right hand about to sign an act titled "Faubourg d’Amercœur rebâti" (Amercœur suburb rebuilt). This decree refers to one signed by Napoleon in 1803 to the prefecture of the Ourthe département to restore this suburb and is an attempt to demonstrate to the newly annexed city the benefits of being part of France and to symbolically take possession of the city.
![Gros - First Consul Bonaparte](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Gros_-_First_Consul_Bonaparte.png)
Bonaparte is shown not as a long-haired revolutionary or in the blue uniform he wears in Gros' ''
Bonaparte au pont d'Arcole'', but in the red uniform of a consul of the republic, with short hair. Instead of resting his hand on his sword in a martial pose, he assumes a civilian one, placing it inside his jacket. The curtain is open in the background showing
St. Lambert's Cathedral, Liège
ST, St, or St. may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Stanza, in poetry
* Suicidal Tendencies, an American heavy metal/hardcore punk band
* Star Trek, a science-fiction media franchise
* Summa Theologica, a compendium of Catholic philosophy an ...
as complete, when in fact it was being demolished at this time during the
Liège Revolution
The Liège Revolution, sometimes known as the Happy Revolution (french: Heureuse Révolution; wa, Binamêye revolucion), against the reigning prince-bishop of Liège, started on 18 August 1789 and lasted until the destruction of the Republic ...
. The excesses of the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
and of the counter-revolutionaries were put into perspective by the painting, in a context of détente and reconciliation between the French Republic and the Catholic Church. Official relations between France and the papacy had been poor since
civil constitution of the clergy in 1790, but the painting's reconstruction of the then-ruined cathedral symbolised the resumption of good relations between them and the "protection" the
First French Republic granted to the Catholic Church in the
concordat of 1801
The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII, signed on 15 July 1801 in Paris. It remained in effect until 1905, except in Alsace-Lorraine, where it remains in force. It sought national reconciliation ...
.
Notes
References
*Heuse, Henri. ''Pages de petite histoire, France et Wallonie 1789-1830''. Georges Thone, Liège. 1936.
*Tinterow, Gary; Conisbee, Philip; Naef, Hans. ''Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch''. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1999.
{{Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
1804 paintings
Paintings of Napoleon
Portraits by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Paintings in Belgium