| | Jean-Auguste-Dominique
Ingres (French, 1780–1867)
Bonaparte as First Consul, 1804
Oil on canvas; 89 3/8 x 57 7/8 in. (227 x 147 cm)
Musée d'Art Moderne
et d'Art Contemporain de la Ville de Liège, on deposit at the Musée
d'Armes, Liège | | Napoleon
I on His Imperial Throne |
 | Ingres
painted this portrait two years before Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne. After
Bonaparte and his wife, Josephine de Beauharnais, toured the northern departments
of France in 1803, it was decided that portraits of the First Consul should be
sent to five towns in the region to remind citizens of their loyalty to the new
regime. Five artists—the young Ingres, Marie-Guilhemine Benoist, Jean-Baptiste
Greuze, Robert Lefèvre, and Charles Meynier—ultimately received commissions
from the minister of the interior to paint full-length portraits of Bonaparte.
Ingres's painting, destined for Liège, in present-day Belgium, shows the
First Consul pointing to an August 1803 decree that designated 300,000 francs
for the reconstruction of that city, which had been partially destroyed by Austrian
troops nine years earlier. As with the imperial portrait, it is unlikely that
Bonaparte posed for Ingres.
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