1285. PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON I.
Horace Vernet (French: 1789-1863).
Emile John Horace Vernet, soldier and artist, was the grandson of Claude Joseph Vernet (236). He was decorated in 1814 by Napoleon for his gallant conduct before the enemy at the Barrière de Clichy, on which occasion he served in a regiment of hussars. In the Louvre there is a picture by him representing the defence of Paris on that occasion. On the fall of the Empire he left France for a time, but he gradually won the favour of the court. In 1833 he joined the French army at Algiers, and there gathered material for the huge battle-pieces which he painted for Louis Philippe. The Crimean War furnished him with another congenial set of subjects. His work had a great vogue in its day, but owed more to its patriotic and stirring subject-matter than to abiding artistic qualities.
Less ideal than the beautiful sketch which David made of Napoleon as First Consul, or the later conventional pictures painted for a generation which had not seen the original. There is no dreamy intensity in the eyes, and no engaging smile. The famous lock in the centre of the forehead is there, and the face is still handsome, imposing, and resolute; but there is already something of the heaviness which presaged his fall.