The Taking of Malta, Grand Master Refuses, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "PRISE DE MALTE" in open capitals above the image. Open boats crowded with men, some in uniform and some in top hats, pull through a heavy sea in the foreground, their oars out at the left, and in the boat at the center an officer in a bicorne stands among the men. At the right the bow of a large warship towers over the boats, its figurehead and headrails drawn in detail, and a second ship under sail lies beyond it. In the left distance the shore is wreathed in gunsmoke, with more boats making for the land.

The caption below the image, in lithographic script, reads: "Le grand-maître ayant refusé l'entrée du port pour toute la flotte, Bonaparte s'en empare de force" In English: The Grand Master having refused entry to the harbor for the whole fleet, Bonaparte takes it by force.

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.

The French expedition to Egypt arrived off Malta on 9 June 1798. When the Grand Master of the Order of Saint John, Ferdinand von Hompesch, would admit only a few ships at a time to take on water, French troops landed on the island the next day, and the Order capitulated on 12 June. Bonaparte remained on Malta for about a week, reorganizing its government, before sailing on toward Alexandria.

The ships and the rough sea make this one of the more pictorial plates in the series, and it suits a collector of naval subjects as well as of Napoleonica.

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