Military Event from Napoleon's First Spanish Campaign (Primary Title)
Military Event from Napoleon's Spanish Campaign (Alternate Title)
Jean-Claude Bonnefond, French, 1796 - 1860 (Artist)
The violence of Napoleon’s military intervention in Spain (1808-14) spurred both French and Spanish artists alike to produce images that reflected the chaos and tumult of the period. In his Disaster of War series, Spain’s Francisco Goya painted the most famous as well as the most overtly gruesome images of the atrocities of the Napoleonic Spanish campaign. Jean-Claude Bonnefond’s Military Event from Napoleon’s Spanish Campaign, in contrast with Goya’s graphic depictions, is an eerily quiet scene of murderous intrigue. Here Bonnefond demonstrates a technical mastery of the medium. The precise quality of Bonnefond’s style is associated with the Lyonnais school, which was known for the very high degree of finish in his paintings. In this work, tiny brushstrokes give the painting its smooth surface quality and highly developed realist details, such as the French soldiers’ bayonets and Napoleonic uniforms. At a well in the courtyard of a monastery, two soldiers have just discovered a comrade’s epaulet and shako, or hat, and traces of a bloody struggle. A monk furtively retreats in the background. Although not a specific incident in the Peninsular War, this scene does directly allude to the tensions that flared between Napoleon and the Catholic Church in Spain for reasons that included Napoleon’s abolition of the Inquisition.
Signed and dated lower left: Bonnefond. Lyon. 1823.
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund, by exchange
Paris, Musée Royal des Arts, Salon de 1824, n° 202, "Scène militaire, première campagne d'Espagne".
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
Some object records are not complete and do not reflect VMFA's full and current knowledge. VMFA makes routine updates as records are reviewed and enhanced.