Bonaparte, First Consul

In August 1803 Bonaparte spent two days in Liège, one of the towns France had recently annexed, and promised the city a portrait of himself. Five painters were each handed one of the newly gained towns to flatter, and the 23-year-old Ingres drew Liège. He never got Bonaparte to sit for him, so he built the pose from an earlier likeness by another painter, Gros. What makes the picture local is the paper under Bonaparte's hand. He is shown about to sign an order to rebuild Amercœur, a Liège suburb that had been destroyed in the fighting of the 1790s. Through the window behind him lie the rooftops and river of the very city the portrait was made for.