Lot 2406 Dα

Adalbert Kossak's artistic career was highly European: he was born in Paris as the son of the Polish painter Juliusz Kossak, he studied in Paris, Krakow and Munich, and he worked in Berlin, among other places, before eventually becoming a professor at the Academy in Warsaw. He achieved international fame primarily as a portrait and battle painter, creating a series of monumental panoramas, a new genre of painting that became popular in the 19th century. Events from Polish history were a central theme of his art, as was Napoleon's Russian campaign, which had preoccupied the artists of his adopted French homeland for generations and which he depicted in a series of paintings, some of them large-scale. The present work depicts Napoleon receiving a message; the viewer is left in the dark as to what news the messenger is delivering; however, the idea that it is not good news is foreshadowed by knowledge of historical events, but also by Napoleon's attitude.