Bonaparte Crossing the Alps

By the time Delaroche painted this in 1848, France had just thrown out another king, and the memory of Napoleon had settled into legend. That is the version Delaroche pushes back against. Half a century earlier, David had shown Bonaparte on a rearing horse, cloak flying, pointing the way to glory. Delaroche went to the eyewitness accounts instead. The real crossing of the Alps in 1800 was done in miserable weather, so here the general sits hunched on a mule, led by a local guide, wrapped against the cold, his face grey and exhausted. The mountains are the enemy, not a backdrop. This is the first of two versions he made. It was already on its way to America by 1850, when he painted the near-copy that now hangs in Liverpool.