Napoleon and History Painting

This study is an inquiry into the fortunes, in both theory and practice, of the idea of history painting during the Napoleonic period. Its main argument is that under Napoleon, French history painting, especially battle painting, encountered a series of questions as to its nature and function. These questions arose in part from the (often contradictory) demands of a propaganda-machine operating within a postrevolutionary crisis of political legitimation, but also from changes in artistic taste which both retained and re-directed an earlier notion of the civic responsibilities of the history painter. This is a resolutely interdisciplinary book: drawing on perspectives from political thought and history, military theory and practice and art history, it centres on the work of the painter, Antoine-Jean Gros, and his controversial painting, La Bataille d'Eylau.