EPISODES IN POLITICAL ILLUSION: THE PROLIFERATION OF WAR IMAGERY IN FRANCE (1804-1856) By Katie Hornstein A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History of Art) in the University of Michigan 2010 Doctoral Committee: Professor Susan L. Siegfried, Chair Professor Michèle A. Hannoosh Associate Professor Howard G. Lay Associate Professor Patricia Simons © Katie S. Hornstein 2010 Acknowledgements I would never have been able to complete this project without the assistance of many people and institutions. This dissertation received financial support from a range of sources and I am grateful to acknowledge them here. A Getty Research Institute Grant funded pre-dissertation research. A Fulbright Full Grant and a Georges Lurcy Fellowship enabled me to conduct dissertation research and to begin drafting the dissertation in Paris, France, while a Kress Travel Grant and an Arthur King Peters Grant gave me the opportunity to work in library and museum collections outside of the French capital. A Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Andrew Mellon Foundation funded my final year of dissertation writing. I have benefitted from the assistance offered to me at many libraries and museums. I would like to thank the staffs of the Fine Arts Library at the University of Michigan, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Centre de documentation at the Musée national du Château at Versailles, the library of the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris, the Service historique de la Défense at Vincennes, the Special Collections Department at McGill University Library and the Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. The majority of the battle paintings in this dissertation are conserved behind closed doors at the Musée national du Château at Versailles. The help of curators was therefore indispensable. Valerie Bajou generously guided me around the attic and engaged me in challenging discussions about Louis- François Lejeune’s work. I count myself as lucky to have benefitted from Frédéric ii Lacaille’s expertise and enthusiasm for Horace Vernet’s monumental paintings at Versailles. On several occasions, he took time out of his busy schedule to accompany me to view them and I cannot thank him enough. Thanks are also due to Jean-Marie Linsolas and Lucie Moriceau at the Section Iconographique of the Service historique de la Défense and to Caroline Joubert at the Musée des beaux-arts in Caen. This project has benefitted from advice and support from many individuals over the past several years. Philippe Bordes and François Robichon kindly shared their expertise with me and helped orient my research in French collections after my arrival in Paris. For encouraging and shaping my work before and during the writing of this dissertation, I would like to thank Steve Edwards and David O’Brien. I would also like to thank Satish Padiyar, Sue Walker and Melanie Vandenbrouck- Przybylski, my fellow co-organizers of the conference “1789, 1989, 2009: Changing Perspectives on Post- Revolutionary Art,” held at the Courtauld Research Forum in June 2009. I would also like to thank Jacob Lewis, who referred me to a Charles Nègre photograph with which this dissertation begins and ends. I am particularly grateful to Darcy Grigsby, who first exposed me to the wonders of art historical research as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley; her mentorship was directly responsible for my decision to pursue a PhD in art history. My family has been a constant source of love and encouragement. They supported my decision to pursue this path and have been my biggest cheerleaders. Without them, this dissertation would have never been completed. I would like to thank Victoria Diamantidis, Jim Hornstein, Nick Hornstein, David and Kathy Love, Nancy Love, Betsy Mosteller, Susanne Rolland and Richard and Ula Witkowski for always believing in me. iii Special thanks are also due to my feline friend, Myszka Hornstein-Witkowski, whose adorable distractions facilitated the writing of this dissertation. In Paris, coffee breaks and Vietnamese sandwiches shared with Tom O’Donnell, Darcie Fontaine and Mark Sawchuk made going to the Bibliothèque nationale fun. I would like to thank Ellen McBreen for giving me a good reason to spend so much time in the Louvre and for making it possible for me to eat my way through Paris without going bankrupt. Isadora Gunbill, Raphael Latrache and Robert Le Gros were my home away from home in Paris and I thank them for their incredible hospitality. My time in New Jersey would not have been the same without Bella Grigoryan, Josephine Halvorson, Diana Martinez, Sally Peters and Anthony Viti. I also thank Heidi Goldstein, Joshua Lillienstein and George Nune for their enduring friendship. Special thanks go to Elena Byhoff, for being there always. My greatest debt is to the faculty and students of University of Michigan. I would like to thank Matt Biro, Celeste Brusati, Jacqueline Francis, Dena Goodman, Megan Holmes, Carole McNamara, Betsy Sears, Alex Potts and Marty Powers for their encouragement during my time in Ann Arbor. My time as a graduate student in the History of Art Department was greatly enriched by the friendship and camaraderie of Heidi Gearhart, Angela Ho, Monica Huerta, Kirsten Olds, Diana Presciutti, Sean Roberts, Heather Vinson and Kathy Zarur. A special mention is due to Christina Chang, my roommate and co-pilot during my years in Ann Arbor; her good humor and friendship were indispensable. Jessica Fripp was both friend and occasional research assistant: I thank her for coming to my rescue in the final months of writing. iv My dissertation committee have shepherded this project to its completion and I owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude. Michèle Hannoosh has been an enthusiastic supporter of this dissertation from its inception. I have benefitted enormously from her expertise and judicious questioning of it. Pat Simons first encouraged my interest in the representation of war in a seminar on early-modern print culture co-taught with Megan Holmes for which I wrote a paper on Jacques Callot’s Miseries of War. Pat taught me that there are no givens when it comes to the history of art and has helped me to develop as a thinker. Howard Lay has acted as teacher and mentor over the past years; he has stepped in at various points during the writing of this dissertation to provide me with incisive feedback for which I am deeply grateful. I will always be indebted to my advisor Susan Siegfried for her guidance over the course of my graduate education. I thank her for her rigorous engagement with this dissertation’s ideas. Her incredible acumen for bringing historical and theoretical concerns to bear upon visual objects has greatly enriched my scholarship. She has been my biggest supporter, my toughest critic and an outstanding mentor. Finally, I thank Viktor Witkowski for everything and then some. You are the greatest thing to have come out of my time at the University of Michigan. Thank you for your love, your commitment to seeing me through this project and for sustaining me in life. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ..............................................................................................................ii List of Figures .......................................................................................................................viii Abstract .................................................................................................................................xix Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................................................................1 Chapter Summary ..................................................................................................................13 Chapter 2: War Imagery and the Visuality of Participation during the Consulate and First Empire ..................................................................................................................18 Of Bloody Heads and Broken Maps ..........................................................................18 Revolutionary Confusion: the Representation of Contemporary War ......................21 The Tableaux Historiques – From Revolution to Empire .........................................28 The Inénieurs-Géographes and the Production of Cartographic and Topographic Knowledge ...........................................................................................33 “The Touch of an Eyewitness” ..................................................................................39 The Spectator as Witness ..........................................................................................44 History Painting and Battle Painting .........................................................................47 The Value of Maps and Vues: Histoire des guerres des gaulois ...............................52 Mapping and Vision and Landscape .........................................................................57 The Affect of the Episode..........................................................................................67 Being There: Transparency and the Eyewitness Episode .........................................74 Conclusion .................................................................................................................83 Chapter 3: Representing War during Peacetime: Paradoxes and Proliferation during the Bourbon Restoration.........................................................................................85