Napoleon

1895

23 x 17 3/4 in /
58.5 x 45.0 cm

Lithograph printed in six colors.
Signed in black crayon lower left, numbered in pencil from the edition of 100 impressions lower left by another hand.

In the summer of 1895 a competition was held by the art-dealers Boussod, Valadon et Cie. for a poster to advertise a biography of Napoleon by William Milligan Sloan, which was to be published in the Century Magazine in New York in 1896. No doubt encouraged by Maurice Joyant, a friend from his youth and director of Boussod and Valadon, Lautrec entered the competition with a coloured design on card Dortu P.573 (Buhrle Collection, Zurich). Although the handling of the motif should actually have appealed to the specially selected jury-the successful society painters Detaille, Gerome and Vibert, and the Napoleon scholar Frederic Masson-the design was not judged worthy of a prize. From the 21 entries, Lucien Metivet, a minor illustrator and former fellow student of Lautrec's in the Atelier Cormon, won the prize.
The rejection of Lautrec's work is all the more astonishing since Lautrec, no doubt with the jury in mind, produced a composition in full sympathy with the elevated traditional image of the great man, and aimed to give an accurate representation of the historical facts, even down to the details of the uniform. After vain attempts to sell his design elsewhere, the artist decided to have an edition printed at his own expense. (Adriani 135)

References: Wittrock 140, Adriani 135