1814,

1884

Titled simply 1814, Jacquet’s etching reproduces Meissonier’s Campagne de France, 1814 (1864, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), a painting that recalls Napoleon’s ill-fated campaign to drive Prussian troops from French soil in March 1814. While Gérôme’s Napoleon in Egypt, hanging to the left, eulogizes Bonaparte at the height of his success, here the emperor and his war-weary staff are depicted near defeat. On April 11, 1814, with Napoleon’s reduced forces surrounded in northern France, Allied Coalition troops marched into Paris, forcing the emperor into abdication—and exile on the island of Elba. The publication of fine reproductive prints after popular paintings was a lucrative business the nineteenth century. Georges Petit—Meisonnier’s dealer in the 1880s—commissioned the engraver Jacquet to replicate the artist’s most celebrated compositions, including Campagne de France, 1814.