Bonaparte Landing at Fréjus, Return from Egypt, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, printed at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered "DÉBARQUEMENT À FREJUS" in open capitals above the image. Bonaparte, in a long coat and bicorne, stands at the center of a small party of officers on a coastal path, facing a man in a dark coat who points toward him. At the left a grenadier in a bearskin cap shoulders his musket beside a turbaned attendant, and beyond them ships ride at anchor while boats bring men ashore. At the right a peasant leaning on a spade, a second man in a broad hat and a small boy watch the arrivals, a pickaxe lies on the ground, and country people under the trees wave their hats.

The caption below the image reads: "Bonaparte prend possession du rivage avec seulement 150 hommes, aux acclamations des paysans." In English: "Bonaparte takes possession of the shore with only 150 men, to the cheers of the peasants."

Vie de Napoléon was published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, éditeur propriétaire. Its title page describes a text written by a society of men of letters from new documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon himself on Saint Helena, with plates lithographed by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after the first painters of the French school. This plate belongs to the first volume.

Bonaparte left Egypt secretly in August 1799, leaving the army under the command of Kléber, and after a passage of some six weeks through a Mediterranean patrolled by the British navy he came ashore near Fréjus, on the coast of Provence, on 9 October 1799. The usual quarantine for arrivals from the East was set aside amid the enthusiasm of the local population. Within a month he had taken power in the coup of 18 Brumaire.

The oblong sheet, with its broad margins, suits a simple frame and mat on a study or library wall.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.