Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Napoleon (After Louis David, Le General Bonaparte vers 1797)
Elizabeth Peyton American
Not on view
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.
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