The Artist: The academic painter Isidore-Alexandre-Augustin Pils was born in Paris, either in 1813 or 1815. His father, François Pils (1785–1867), was a soldier. At twelve, Isidore entered the studio of Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, where he remained for four years. In 1832 he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as a pupil of François Edouard Picot. He was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1838, whereupon he spent four years at the French Academy’s Villa Medici, then led by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Pils devoted his career to religious and especially military subjects, attaining success as an officially sanctioned painter of the sort of modern martial subjects pioneered by his elder contemporary Horace Vernet. In 1863, following the French government’s introduction of pedagogical reforms in the field of visual arts, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris devoted three teaching studios to painting, with Pils, Alexandre Cabanel, and Jean-Léon Gérôme appointed to lead them. Pils died at Douarnenez in 1875.
Pils has never been the subject of deep and comprehensive study, and the brief posthumous biography by Louis Becq de Fouquières (1876) remains a frequently cited source.[1]
The Commission: This compositional sketch was produced in connection with a painting that the French state commissioned from Pils in 1861. It was intended to commemorate the 1860 visit to Algeria by Emperor Napoleon III and his wife, Empress Eugénie. Algeria was a French colony, having been conquered by Napoleon’s predecessor, King Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, in 1830.
The fate of the final painting is unknown, but it was planned for the Musée de l’Histoire de France. Founded by Louis-Philippe in 1837 and housed in the former royal Château of Versailles, the museum was dedicated “to all the glories of France.” In fact, the bronze characters reading À TOUTES LES GLOIRES DE LA FRANCE remain on the frieze beneath the pediment of the palace’s north wing. Today, the château is best known for the royal apartments used by the Bourbon dynasty until the Revolution of 1789, but Louis-Philippe’s aim was to reconcile disparate epochs of France’s past through a presentation of thematic rooms devoted to great battles from throughout French history, the Crusades, scenes of the revolutionary year 1792, Jacques Louis David’s painting of Napoleon I’s coronation, known as
Le Sacre, and other triumphs of the First Empire, as well as events leading to the elevation of Louis-Philippe as monarch. This is the context in which
Reception of Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie by the Kabyle Leaders at Algiers on September 18, 1860 was meant to be seen. At nearly fifty feet in length, it was not inordinately grand for the setting, whose function was propagandistic.
The Subject: As depicted, the subject closely follows highlights of the anonymous account reported in the newspaper
Le Moniteur Universel: Journal officiel de l’Empire français. Napoleon and Eugénie arrived in Algiers on the imperial yacht,
L’Aigle (The Eagle), on September 17, 1860. To give a sense of the pomp, scale, and brevity of the following day’s events, the description is quoted in full:
“Algiers, September 18, 1860. The Emperor and Empress this morning laid the first stone of the magnificent boulevard which will run along the sea and, by providing the city with a long-desired promenade, create an industrial artery for a great future. This beautiful road will take the name of Boulevard de l’Impératrice. The blessing was given with great religious pomp by Monsignor Pavy, Bishop of Algiers, assisted by his clergy. An immense crowd of French and indigenous people, eager to gaze upon the features of the Emperor and Empress, endowed the ceremony with a character as moving as it was picturesque. During the day, Their Majesties went to the Arach, at the entrance to the Mitidja plain, to attend the greatest Arab festival that could conceivably be held. Under the skillful and ingenious direction of General Jusuf, contingents of Kabyle infantry and horsemen from the three provinces, with all the aghas and caïds at their head, had been gathered to pay homage to the Emperor. After a mock tribe-to-tribe fight; after a fantasia of nine or ten thousand cavalry rushing at triple gallop and unloading their arms before the tent of Their Majesties; after a magnificent charge of twelve squadrons of spahis, crossing the plain like a hurricane; after jousting; after gazelle, ostrich, and falcon hunts; the parade of Tuaregs, with veiled faces, mounted on their camels, and of the Chambaa, those inhabitants of the depths of the desert, future conveyors of our trade with Sudan; after, finally, the most splendid spectacle that could possibly be held on the soil of Africa, all the
goums [French squadrons of indigenous soldiers], forming an immense line of battle, with rifles raised and banners deployed, majestically approached the heights on which the Emperor's tent was pitched. Then the chiefs, in their dazzling burnooses, dismounted and came, all together, to present the horse
Gaada, caparisoned entirely in gold, and to perform an act of submission to the Sovereign of France. At this moment, made solemn by the grandeur of the theater, and by the warlike aspect of those enemies of yesterday whose long resistance glorified our armies, the Emperor could not help being visibly emotional. H.H. the Bey of Tunis attended this important solemnity.”[2]
The celebration was followed by a grand ball. The following day, September 19, “Their Majesties attended the magnificent review of the troops of the three provinces who came for the feast . . . . The Emperor will go to the banquet given by the city, and immediately after, Their Majesties will embark on board
L’Aigle, to leave at midnight. Their Majesties must be in Marseilles on Friday, around four o'clock.”[3]
Execution of the Commission: The execution of the subject in paint presented certain challenges, one of which was that Pils did not witness the spectacle itself. He left for Algeria in 1861 and remained there until 1862, to survey the scene and produce studies to assist in developing the composition. The artist had difficulty finding Kabyle men and women suitable to his purpose in Algiers and its environs, so he ventured inland. There, he made portrait studies that he later adapted to the picture. One example, inscribed and dated “10 D[écemb]re 1861 Kabylie” (The Met
2018.208.2), served as the model for the leftmost of three standing men who encounter the imperial couple. Pils made an immense number of studies. Yet two models proved too elusive for the artist: despite repeated requests for sittings with the Emperor and Empress, his appeals were declined with polite but vague promises to follow up that were never acted upon.
It is fitting that the composition loosely recalls
L’expédition d’Egypte sous les ordres de Bonaparte, painted in 1829–35 by François Edouard Picot’s close contemporary Léon Cogniet. It was produced for the central ceiling in the gallery of Papyrus and Greek Manuscripts of the Musée Charles X in the Palais du Louvre, Paris (still
in situ).
To Pils’s frustration, he exhibited the still unfinished painting at the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1867.[4] There are a number of accounts of the large canvas’s fate, but none has been verified. Some state that it was installed in the Tuileries, Paris, and destroyed in the fire of 1871. Alternately, it may have been returned to Pils so that he could complete it.[5]
Two oil sketches for the painting were included in the artist’s estate sale; the dimensions given in the catalogue do not match the present work. But the presence of the artist’s estate stamp and, on the reverse, the wax seal of the estate and a label fragment bearing the single dimension “H., 0m, 59,” strongly suggest that this was no. 16 in the sale (see Provenance). The dimensions of lot 15 in the sale were 72 by 98 centimeters. There is a sketch very similar to the present one (château de Compiègne).[6]
Asher Miller 2022
[1] Becq de Fouquières 1876. See also, for example, the anonymous entry in
Grove Art Online (https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T067681, consulted September 9, 2022).
[2] Anonymous, “Partie non-officielle,”
Le Moniteur Universel, September 19, 1860, p. 1. This and other translations by the author. The man referred to here as General Jusuf was Joseph Vantini (Elba 1808–1866 Cannes).
[3] Anonymous, “Partie non-officielle,”
Le Moniteur Universel, September 21, 1860, p. 1.
[4] On the commission and the development of the painting, see Becq de Fouquières 1876, pp. 35–38.
[5] Charles Bigot,
Peintres français contemporains, Paris, 1888, p. 145.
[6] Its dimensions are 71 x 99 cm. See Laure Chabanne, "Fête donnée à l'empereur Napoléon III et à l'impératrice Eugénie à Alger, le 18 septembre 1860 ou La Réception des chefs kabyles par l'empereur Napoléon III," in
Catalogue des peintures du château de Compiègne, 2020 [https://www.compiegne-peintures.fr/notice/notice.php?id=574]
