March in the Desert, Egypt, an Ocean of Sand, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "MARCHE DANS LE DÉSERT" in open capitals above the image. Bonaparte stands on foot at the center on the pale sand, his right arm stretched out to the left, and a soldier lies collapsed at his feet. At the left a gun team drags a cannon and limber through the sand with a soldier straining beside it, and along the low ridge behind, mounted officers, standards and lines of infantry move across the skyline. At the right infantrymen with packs and shouldered muskets trudge forward. The whole upper half of the image is given to a pale, empty sky.

The caption below the image, in lithographic script, reads: "Quand l'aurore vint éclairer cet Océan de sable, le découragement s'empara de l'armée." In English: When the dawn came to light up this ocean of sand, discouragement took hold of the army.

The plate comes from the first volume of Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard. Its title page describes a text written by a society of men of letters from the new documents dictated and corrected at Saint Helena by Napoleon himself, illustrated with lithographed plates by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after painters of the French school. Madou, a Belgian, later became known as a painter of genre scenes.

In July 1798, after the capture of Alexandria, the army marched inland across the desert by way of Damanhur toward the Nile in the full heat of summer. The troops, still in European uniforms, suffered badly from thirst, and wells along the route were few or had been spoiled. The march became one of the best remembered hardships of the Egyptian expedition.

The open sky and spare composition give the plate a calm presence on a wall.

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