Charlet : Aux Origines De La Légende Napoléonienne, 1792-1845

Exhibition at the Museum of La Roche-sur-Yon, 10 October 2008 - 17 January 2009 ;
then at the Bibliothèque Paul Marmottan, Boulogne Billancourt, 5 March - 27 June 2009

Since the great retrospective exhibition of the work of Charlet (1792-1845) in Paris in 1893, the relevance of this master of lithography, admired by Eugène Delacroix in his time, has continued to decline. Not that the work is rare, Charlet produced more than a thousand lithographs, and a large part of them were devoted to Napoleon and his Grande Armée. Indeed, Charlet is one of the main architects of the Napoleonic legend, the popular one that he embodies in the type of the grognard, bravado and sentimentality. He also left some great history paintings, and his Retreat from Russia (1836) immediately became a classic of French painting.

This exhibition catalogue allows us to discover this artist after more than a century of near disappearance. His immense work ranges from a charming primer for children to numerous albums recounting the picturesque life of the old grognard of the First Empire campaigns.