Lot 112: Laurent Dabos (Toulouse 1761-1835 Paris)

The head of Napoleon surrounded by a laurel wreath in a sunburst
oil on canvas, unlined
9 1/2 in. (49.5 cm.) diameter
in its original frame

Paris, Galerie des Champs-Elysées, Exposition historique et militaire de la Révolution et de l'Empire, 1895, no. 173
Paris, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Exposition David et ses élèves, 7 April-9 June 1913 (according to label on reverse).
London, Wildenstein, Consulat, Empire, Restauration: Art in Early XIX Century France (catalogue by G. Bernier), 17 June-27 July 1981, p. 62, illustrated p. 24.
New York, Wildenstein, Consulat, Empire, Restauration: Art in Early XIX Century France (catalogue by G. Bernier), 21 April-28 May 1982, p. 106, illustrated p. 60.
Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Europa 1789: Aufklärung, Verklärung, Verfall (catalogue by W. Hofmann), 15 September-19 November 1989, no. 497 (entry by A. Stief); also under no. 498, p.363, pl. 47.
New York, The Dahesh Museum, The Dahesh Salon. Part II, Art, Patronage and Presentation in America, 1 July-29 November 1997, no. 25.
Roslyn Harbor, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, Napoleon and His Age, 28 January-29 April 2001, p. 87, illustrated p. 9.

N. MacGregor, 'Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions: London Wildenstein', in Burlington Magazine, CXXIII, 940, July 1981, p. 432, fig. 77.
A. Stief, Die Aeneisillustrationen von Girodet-Trioson. Künstlerische und literarische Rezeption von Vergils Epos in Frankreich im 1800, Frankfurt, Bern and New York, 1986, pp. 270-2, note 8, fig. 64.
W. Telesko, 'Napoleon I. als "thronender Jupiter." Zur Rezeption des europäischen Herrscherporträts bei Jean-Auguste-Dominique
Ingres,' Pantheon, LV, 1997, pp. 202 and 204, note 26.

Bernard Franck, by 1913.

Until recently, the present work bore an attribution to Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy Trioson (1767-1824). One version of this striking design, also by Laurent Dabos and dated 1806, is in the collection of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin; another, dating from circa 1810, is in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, while a fourth is in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence. (For an account of those version and a discussion of the composition's iconography, see the catalogue of the exhibition, Hamburg, Kunsthalle, 1989, op. cit., pp. 363-4). Finally, a workshop replica, wrongly identified as the present work was offered at Sotheby's, New York, 23 May 2001, lot 144 as 'Attributed to Girodet'.

This lot has no reserve