Napoleon III on Horseback, Inaugurating the Boulevard de Strasbourg
Medalist: François-Joseph-Hubert Ponscarme French
This is the specimen that was shown in the 1967 exhibition at the hôtel de la Monnaie in Paris, "La Medaille en France de Ponscarme a la fin de la Belle Epoque," an exhibition that did much to rekindle interest in Ponscarme and his contemporaries. The casting faithfully captures in an almost impressionistic way the flickering surfaces of the wax model that preceded it. The deed commemorated is the completion of one of the broad new thoroughfares of Second Empire Paris, the boulevard de Strasbourg, which leads to the Gare de l'Est, its pointed roof visible here at the vanishing point. Baron Haussmann, city planner par excellence, is the gentleman nearest the equestrian emperor.
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