GUILLAUME GUILLON-LETHIÈRE Napoleon I in Coronation Robes.
Oil on ivory panel, circa 1805. 247x190 mm; 9 3/4x7 1/2 inches. Signed in oil, lower left recto.
Provenance: Private collection, New York.
Guillon-Lethière (1760-1832) was a French painter born on the island of Guadeloupe. He was educated in Paris and was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1786. By the time he returned to France in 1792, the nation was in the throes of revolution. He befriended Louis Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon I, and followed him into exile. Guillon-Lethière later became the director of the French Academy.
Napoleon I in Coronation Robes (collection of the Musée national du château de Fontainebleau) is an oil on canvas originally painted by François Gérard (1770-1837) in 1805 for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after the emperor's coronation on December 2, 1804. Napoleon I thereafter commissioned several replicas of this favorite portrait for his family members and national officials.
