13 Apr, 2010
Napoleon’s Propaganda Paintings
Posted by: Gina Alianiello In: Arts & Humanities|Fine Art
Course / Program Name: Napoleonic Paintings
Hosted by / Sponsored by: The Open University
Course of Study: Arts and History
Course Link: Take this Course
Description: “Napoleonic Paintings” examines how Napoleon’s regime compromised and censored to control mass propaganda in the prestigious “history painting” patronized by diverse crowds at the Salon of the Louvre.
Through lectures, exercises and plates, the 16 hour course explores the challenges of framing Napoleon’s public image as a peace seeking, moral and civilizing military genius who felt for the common man.
Napoleon’s paintings circulated in a post Revolutionary period that questioned divine right and authority—during a shift away from Enlightenment ideals of the rational, heroic and traditional and toward more Romantic sensibilities of the irrational, individual and modern questioning of suffering and violence.
Two paintings are singled out as pivotal in emulating the emerging Romantic style and for revealing the tensions between the “civilizing mission” of enlightened nationalistic ideals and the reality of suffering and death. The paintings “Jaffa” and “Eylau” by Jean Antoine Gros ‘are said to enshrine not only Napoleon’s heroism but also Gros’s misgivings’—introducing doubt into the glory of French history painting.
A short section of the course is devoted to Women and Portraiture in Napoleonic Europe, showing unprecedented privacy and authority in public images of women.