Military Festival at Boulogne with Napoleon Distributing Stars of the Legion of Honor
19th century
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 13 3/8 x 17 11/16 in. (33.9 x 44.9 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Harry G. Friedman Bequest, 1967
Accession Number
67.539.370
Tags
Art Historical Context
Victor Adam's *Military Festival at Boulogne Napoleon Distributing Stars of the Legion of Honor* captures grand moment of imperial pomp from the Napoleonic era. This 19th-century lithograph depicts Napoleon Bonaparte at the Camp of Boulogne, a massive military encampment established in 1803–1805 as a staging ground for his aborted invasion of England. Surrounded by soldiers on horseback and cheering troops, Napoleon bestows the stars of the Légion d'Honneur—a prestigious order he founded in 1802 to honor military valor and civilian merit—elevating the scene into a symbol of French pride and un...
About the Artist
Victor Adam · 1801–1866
Victor Adam was born in Paris in 1801 and built a prolific and commercially successful career as one of the leading lithographers and illustrators of nineteenth-century France. He received a conventional academic training in painting, but it was the new medium of lithography — still in its first decades of widespread use when Adam came of age — that provided the ideal vehicle for his gifts: a faci...