Napoleon (After Louis David, Le General Bonaparte vers 1797)
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.During a visit to the Louvre in 2004, Peyton saw the famous unfinished late eighteenth-century portrait of Napoleon by Jacques Louis David. The work rekindled her interest in the French general and soon-to-be emperor, and she decided to base her own painting on it. Fascinated that David’s portrait managed to convey the general’s magnetic personality despite its incomplete state, Peyton embraced the reductive aesthetic of the original work, using open brushstrokes to evoke an air of spontaneity. She also endowed her subject with the characteristic androgynous beauty seen in her portraits of pop stars and celebrities, positioning her portrait of Napoleon alongside the imagery of these heroes of our time.
Artwork Details
- Title: Napoleon (After Louis David, Le General Bonaparte vers 1797)
- Artist: Elizabeth Peyton (American, born Danbury, Connecticut, 1965)
- Date: 2005
- Geography: Country of Origin USA
- Medium: Oil on board
- Dimensions: 14 × 11 in. (35.6 × 27.9 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Courtesy The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT.
- Rights and Reproduction: Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art