The Night Round, Bonaparte Visits the Outposts, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered "LA RONDE" (The Round) in open capitals above the image. It is a night scene. At the left a grenadier in a tall bearskin stands at his post with his musket under a gnarled tree, and Bonaparte, one hand in the breast of his coat, stands beside him at the center. At the right a party of horsemen in crested helmets rides up, the moon breaks through the clouds above them, and tents and the glow of a fire show in the camp behind the sentry.

The caption in script below the image reads: "Bonaparte visitait seul pendant la nuit les postes de l'armée." In English: "Bonaparte used to visit the outposts of the army alone at night." No scene number or imprint is lettered on the sheet.

The plate comes from Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard, who is named on the title page as publisher and proprietor. The 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, and a work illustrated with plates lithographed by Madou after painters of the French school: Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877), the Belgian lithographer and later painter. This is the first volume, which follows Napoleon from his schooling at Brienne to the camp of Boulogne.

Neither the title nor the caption names a place or a date: the plate illustrates a habit rather than a single event, the general going round the sentries of his own army by night. In the first volume of the book it stands among the scenes of the Italian campaign of 1796 and 1797, between the bridge of Arcole and the battle of Rivoli.

The whole image is worked in deep half tone, the moonlight and firelight drawn in the crayon grain of the stone.

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