What do you know about the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars? That Marie Antoinette said ‘Let them eat cake’ and lost her head to Madame Guillotine? That diminutive Napoleon wore lifts in his boots? That Wellington beat the Frogs at Waterloo? If you are seeking Enlightenment about this turbulent epoch then don’t hope to find it at The Royal Academy’s newest exhibition Citizens and Kings. The exhibition intends to ilustrate the transformation of portraiture during the fall of the Ancien Regime, the age of Napoleon and the subsequent rise of the bourgeoisie. The result however falls short. The exhibition is exhaustive, but by no means illuminating. To paraphrase that stalwart line of music journalists everywhere: it’s all filler, too little killer. What killer there is fails to redeem a lacklustre show.
The exhibition opens on a high, with Ingre’s Napoleon on the Imperial Throne, reigning supreme on the North wall of the rotunda. He is visible through the glass doors even before the humble gallery-goer reaches the exhibition proper. This hanging is something of a coup de theatre on the part of the Royal Academy; you ascend the marble staircase, cross the great hall, are ushered though the glass doors while all the while being held by Napoleon’s steely, imperious gaze. By the time you are stood before him you are all set to genuflect at his feet.
If ever your jaw is going to drop in front a painting let it be this one. Nearly 9ft high this portrait dominates the gallery as Napoleon dominated Europe. The iconography associates Napoleon with Imperial Rome and Charlemagne, while the frontal, iconic pose draws parallels with Flemish depictions of Christ. This portrait is the ultimate assertion of power; portraits of George III, Louis XVI and Catherine the Great on the facing walls, though equally colossal in size, seem to cower in the presence of Ingres’ mighty Napoleon.
After such a breathtaking opening statement its downhill from then on. Too many sub-categories of portrait, one for every one of the Academy’s first floor rooms, hinted at barrel-scraping especially when it came to ‘Family Portraits’ and ‘The Landscape and The Figure.’ Nevertheless, there are some fine offerings from David, Gainsborough, Goya, Reynolds and Ingres. One can only wish they had the space they deserve, unencumbered by the work of so many lesser artists.
David’s Death of Marat, that great emblem of the Reign of Terror, got my pulse racing but it was only on returning home that I discovered courtesy of the Sunday Telegraph that the Marat on display was a copy. The Louvre consider the original too precious to lend, a stance for which I have full sympathy. If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain…then tickets on the Eurostar will be booked.
The exhibition closes on a high note with another Ingres’, this time of Newspaper magnate Louis-Francois Bertin who is generally held up as the emblem of France’s newly powerful bourgeoisie. He is the epitome of the nouveau riche; an arriviste, a parvenu, and boy, is he proud of it. Here is a man who is the antithesis of spoilt, little rich kid Louis XVI last seen preening in ermine in the opening room. This is a man who came from comparatively humble beginnings, but whose intelligence, guile and drive earned him a position of power and wealth. He leans forward, arms on his knees, as if to weigh us up. His shrewd look is poised between approval and scepticism and we hover in front of him wondering which it is.
Ingres’ Napoleon and Bertin are the first and last portraits on display and these two images chart the transformation in portraiture that the vague and confused gallery notes fail to make clear. This painter who had once painted Napoloen as Emperor, Tyrant, and Messiah, now paints a business man; no title, no armies at his heel, no delusions of grandeur, just frank, honest and uncompromising.
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