Exhibition: Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
As a military and colonial endeavor, the Egyptian campaign (1798–1801) was a failure, yet it paradoxically ranks among Napoleon’s most significant achievements.
In addition to his soldiers, Napoleon also brought to Egypt 150 scholars, or savants, whose project it was to systematically explore, describe, and document every aspect of the country - Egypt was soon to become the most thoroughly mapped region on earth. This select group of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, naturalists, and artists served France’s political mission by providing the comprehensive information and skills an occupying force would need to govern and rebuild effectively. At the same time they enhanced the expedition’s ideological goals by rediscovering the wonders of Pharaonic Egyptian civilization, with which Napoleon, in his dual roles of liberator and conqueror, was happy to be associated.
The ultimate product of the Commission’s exhaustive research was the Description de l’Égypte, a massive, encyclopedic compendium published between 1809 and 1828. An unprecedented scholarly achievement, its first edition was composed of ten volumes of text and thirteen volumes of engraved plates. It is considered the foundational work of modern Egyptology.
Bringing together more than eighty plates from the Description de l’Égypte, vivid nineteenth-century Orientalist paintings that were influenced by those illustrations, and a selection of campaign letters and documents, this exhibition explores the legacy of the brief French occupation of Egypt and reveals how the interaction between military power, scientific knowledge, and artistic skills shaped the West’s enduring image of the country.
Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt is at the Frey Art Museum in Seattle until January 4, 2009.
Lisa Small / Independent Curator
Art Review:
“Napoleon on the Nile” is a mixed bag of intriguing material for anyone interested in Orientalism and the art of discovery and conquest. The exquisite engravings that document the expedition accompanying Napoleon’s ill-fated army through Egypt are the high point of the show. They remind us that in the days before photography, the easiest way for the public to be exposed to the landscapes, flora and fauna of exotic places was for artists to painstakingly reproduce them.
This work is spectacular, in a quiet way. I was happiest contemplating engravings of Egyptian landmarks, hieroglyphs, a detail of the Rosetta stone and natural history studies of mummies, spiders, fishes, reptiles, petrified wood and other oddities of the place. Here you get the full sense of how awesome these things were when first seen by European eyes — like scenes from Mars. Even now, as familiar as much of the imagery is, the vast scale, mystery and antiquity of Egyptian culture still thrills.
Sheila Farr / Seattle Times art critic
