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Framed and on the wall
Frame and rooms are illustrations of how the piece could look; it is sold unframed unless the description says otherwise.
Napoleon as First Consul, Frontispiece Portrait, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827
£290
$385 · €345
Original print, not a reproduction.
Ships worldwide from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked. 14-day returns.
- Date
- 1827
- Technique
- Lithograph
- Coloring
- Uncolored
- Condition
- Good. Age toning, darker at the edges; handling soiling along the edges and scattered foxing in the margins. Printed image clean.
- Collection
- Uniforms & regiments
- Era
- 1790 to 1815, Napoleonic wars
- Stock no.
- BG-14174-3-1
What the condition grades mean
- Excellent
- Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
- Very good
- Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
- Good
- Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
- Fair
- Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
An original antique lithographic portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul, the frontispiece portrait from Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered PREMIER CONSUL in open outline capitals below the image, with Madou del. under the lower left of the image and Lith. de Jobard under the lower right.
The young Bonaparte is shown at bust length, head turned three quarters to the left and eyes cast sideways, his long unpowdered hair falling to the high collar of a dark coat embroidered with oak leaves. The head is worked up in fine crayon against a soft vignetted ground that fades into the paper, with no border line around the image.
Vie de Napoléon was published at Brussels in 1827 in two volumes by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard, with a text written by a society of men of letters from the new documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon himself at Saint Helena. Its lithographs are credited to Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877), who later became the best known Belgian genre painter of his generation.
The credit Madou del. (Madou drew it) identifies the draftsman, and Lith. de Jobard the press that printed it. This upright portrait is unusual within a work otherwise made up of oblong narrative scenes, each with its own title and script caption, and it gives the face that the reader then follows through the campaigns.
It is a crayon lithograph printed in black and uncolored as issued, and the tonal range Madou achieves in the face and hair, from the deep shadow of the collar to the bare paper of the highlights, shows how quickly the new medium had matured in Brussels within a decade of Jobard opening his press.
Condition: Age toning, darker at the edges; handling soiling along the edges and scattered foxing in the margins. Printed image clean.
A single sheet frames well in a plain dark molding with a wide off white mat, and three or four plates from the series hung together make a coherent wall for a study, a library or a hallway.
This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.
