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Napoleon Bonaparte: The British Sale

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A MARBLE DEATH MASK OF NAPOLEON Circa 1826 image 1

Lot 161^*

A MARBLE DEATH MASK OF NAPOLEON
Circa 1826

27 October 2021, 14:00 BST

London, New Bond Street

Sold for £8,925 inc. premium

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A MARBLE DEATH MASK OF NAPOLEON

Circa 1826, Gesso backed after the Rev Richard Boys example, inscribed on the reverse '1826 R.B.', a later metal hoop set into the gesso for wall mounting, 305 x 148mm.,

Footnotes

Provenance:
The Boys family
Marie Antoinette Ruelle Pardee
D.R. Garnière
Jean-Pierre Fournier de la Touraille
French private collection

Exhibited:
'Napoléon et la France de son temps', Rochechouart, Centre artistique et littéraire de Rochechouart, 27 March - 8 July 1976, item 537.
Waterloo Memorial Museum, 'Napoléon: de Waterloo à Sainte-Hélène, la naissance de la légende', 5 May to 17 October 2021

"Napoleon was not of the stuff that kings are made of – he was of the marble from which gods are hewn" (Heinrich Heine).

The Rev Richard Boys is said to have been the first Englishman granted an audience with the exiled Emperor on his arrival on the island of St. Helena, as well as being invited to play chess with him afterwards. He was appointed Junior Chaplain at St Helena by the Honourable East India Company in 1811 and succeeded the Rev Samuel Jones as Senior Chaplain in 1815, holding this office until 1829. Boys took with him on his return to England the armchair in which Napoleon is said to have used on his visits, two walking sticks and other mementoes, and two casts of the plaster death mask made by the portrait-painter Joseph William Rubidge from the mould taken by Dr. Burton and Antommarchi.

One of Boys' two plaster masks is now on deposit at the Maison française d'Oxford and is known as the Sankey cast after his daughter's married name. The other was sold in these rooms on 19 June 2013 (lot 196). This marble example was presumably carved for the family after one of the two plaster originals.

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