Lot 103: Nicolas André Monsiau (Paris 1754-1837)

Nicolas André Monsiau (Paris 1754-1837)
Alexander the Great's conquest in northwestern India
signed and dated 'Monsiau 1809' (lower left)
oil on canvas
35½ x 77¼ in. (90 x 196.5 cm.)

Paris, Salon, 1810, no. 582.

Anonymous sale; Palais d'Orsay, Paris, 28 November 1978, lot 52.
Anonymous sale; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 13 December 1989, lot 116.

Monsiau's exhilarating scene of ancient battle and epic conquest made its debut at the Paris Salon of 1810. It depicts an episode that took place during a campaign of conquest undertaken by Alexander the Great in northwestern India (present-day Pakistan) between 327 and 325 B.C. The painting's title in the Salon livret, Trait inoui de la valeur d'Alexandre (Alexander's Unusual Feat of Heroism) refers to an episode in the story of the Macedonian hero, in which 'this prince is besieging the city of Oxydracae, and makes himself the first to mount the attack. His ladder breaks behind him. Then alone at the top of the wall and exposed to enemy arrows, he throws himself into the city and does battle against all comers'. Monsiau depicts the intrepid leader and a number of his soldiers as they have just scaled the battlements at his right. As the fierce engagement rages around him, Alexander brandishes a sword and protects himself with a shield ornamented with the Medusa'a head. It was not the capture of the town by his troops that terrified the Oxydracae tribes, but the unheard of action by Alexander of jumping over the wall and straight into the arms of the enemy that sent terror throughout Oxydracae; the tribes immediately surrendered to the fearless victor.

In this ambitious composition, Monsiau has taken his lead from two paintings in Charles Le Brun's famous series of the 'Triumphs of Alexander', The Passage of the Granicus and The Battle of Arbella (both Musée du Louvre, Paris), especially in the interpretation of gestures and facial expressions. The composition also reflects certain of the early battle pictures of Nicolas Poussin and the more immediate precedent of Jacques-Louis David's Rape of the Sabines (Museé du Louvre, Paris).

Monsiau had been the pupil of David's principal rival, Pierre Peyron, but he was friendly with the great neoclassical master nonetheless, and his earlier painting of another subject drawn from the history of Alexander, Alexander Taming Bucephalus, inspired David's celebrated depiction of Napoleon Crossing the Alps at the Grand-Saint-Bernard (1801, Museé national du Château de Malmaison, and other versions) when it appeared at the Salon of 1787.