oil, canvas, 62 × 80 cm
Signed and dated p. d.: WOJCIECH KOSSAK.
- 1901; illegible author's inscription in German
Sphinx with Napoleon Wojciech Kossak painted several times. The very idea of the painting seems to have been inspired by a well-known canvas by the famous French Orientalist painter Jean-Leon Gerome from 1867/68. Kossak's trip to Egypt, undertaken in September 1900, was also significant, where, together with Michal Gorstkin-Wywiórski, he prepared sketches for the planned panorama of the Battle of the Pyramids. Kossak's first version of Napoleon and the Sphinx was created back in 1900, and several more versions were to be painted by the artist over the next three decades, but it was the canvas on display at the auction that the artist most likely wrote about in letters to his wife
dated May and August 1901:
"(...) But in addition to the sketches you will see something else that makes people so enthralled that they cannot tear themselves away from it: Bonaparte in front of the sphinx are looking at each other. (...) he, young, with long hair, as the generals of the republic wore at the time, propped his head on his hand and gazing sits on the rubble, all in the mystical pink light that is only there. (...) Peace and quiet, the bivouacs down below can be seen,
by them grenadiers and Egyptians lighting fires for them. It makes a crazy impression on everyone." [Berlin, Sunday in May 1901] "My Minya. Half an hour ago the two emperors came out. (...) The Emperor is terribly content, he goes from one to the other and can't settle down. At last I show him the Sphinx with Napoleon, you won't believe how it has enthralled him: - Ein schóner Gedanke, ein schóner Gedanke - he kept repeating (beautiful thought). It took an hour." [Berlin, Wednesday, August 14, 1901 12 noon].
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