Exhibition labels & didactics - National Gallery of Victoria

NAPOLEON: REVOLUTION TO EMPIRE
That our region was originally named Terre Napoléon
(Napoleon Land) was a compelling reason for the National Gallery of
Victoria to wish to undertake this panoramic survey examining
French art, culture and life from the 1770s to the 1820s. One of
the principal goals of Napoleon: Revolution to Empire is to present
Australian audiences with the complex network of connections
between Australia and France in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. From its opening tale of Western Australia
being claimed for France and Louis XV by the intrepid seafarer
Saint Aloüarn in 1772, to its closing presentation of the copy of
Captain James Cook’s narrative of his Pacific explorations that
Napoleon was reading during his last days of exile (1815–21)
on the remote island of St Helena, this exhibition tells a compelling
story of France’s fascination with Australia throughout the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. It also traces the extraordinary
career of Napoleon as supreme ruler of France following the
political chaos of the French Revolution; as well as examining
his wife Josephine’s passion for Australian flora and fauna.
The exhibition further documents the remarkable changes in
iconography and visual expression that occurred in the fine and
decorative arts in France in this period. In creating the Empire Style,
the Napoleonic era raised the arts in France to a new level
of sumptuousness.
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