Height overall:12.5 cm (5.3in)
Gilt bronze and patinated bronze. Standing figure of Emperor Napoléon I (1769-1821) modelled standing full-length, arms folded, right leg forward, in the uniform of the Chasseurs à Cheval de la Garde Impériale, raised on a bronze base cast as a tapering rocky outcrop cast with sea shells and applied with a broken gilt bronze sword and fallen eagle.
The present bronze dates to the great revival of Bonapartism that propelled Napoleon III to power and initiated the Second Empire (1852-1870). It references Saint Helena as the remote, volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean that famously served as Napoleon Bonaparte's final place of exile and ‘rock island fastness’, where stripped of all power he spent his final years. Moreover it touches upon the Lord Byron’s use of the imagery to critique the victorious allied European monarchs, portraying Napoleon as a chained giant matching wits with the bleak Atlantic, forever pacing the stony ramparts of his island cage.
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The figure itself is in a form the small ‘statue’ that Napoleon offered to his physician Dr O’Meara on his departure from St. Helena. It gained attention through its appearance as the frontispiece of the second edition of O'Meara's 'Napoleon in exile, or, A voice from St. Helena' (London: Simpkin & Marshall, 1822). The model later became widely known through bronze editions by Emile Coriolan Hippolyte Guillemin (1841-1907) during the Second Empire.