Lot n° 21
Estimation :
2000 - 2500
EUR
Hippolyte LECOMTE (1781-1857)
Spanish prisoners led to their depot 1824
Oil on canvas 24.5 x 32.5 cm
Signed and dated lower right: Lecomte 1824
Presented in its Restoration period frame
Exhibition: - Salon of 1824, n°1095.
In 1824, Lecomte, a pupil of Regnault and son-in-law of Carle Vernet, presented three paintings at the Salon celebrating the fine conduct of the French army, which had recently returned from Spain victorious.
Two years earlier, a military uprising led by the liberal opposition had sequestered the family of King Ferdinand VII, the monarch restored by the Congress of Vienna. In Verona, Chateaubriand had pleaded with the Holy Alliance for France to be entrusted with the task of restoring the fallen monarchical authority. Louis XVIII therefore announced on January 28, 1823, that "one hundred thousand Frenchmen are ready to march invoking the name of Saint Louis to preserve the throne of Spain for a grandson of Henry IV. This mission was a sort of test of respectability in front of a Europe worried about the return of France to the international scene: for the first time since Waterloo, the armies, reputedly Bonapartists, were once again treading the battlefields.
Led by the King's nephew, the Duke of Angouleme, the French flying the white flag swept away the Spanish insurgents, dealing them the coup de grâce at the famous capture of the Trocadero fort, locking the access to the city of Cadiz, the stronghold of the revolt.
Alongside our painting, by the same painter, was no. 1091 "Attack and capture of the entrenchments in front of Coruña by the Bourke division" (Versailles, Musée national du château de Versailles, inv. MV 1784), and no. 1092 "Outposts of the French army at the bivouac, in the Sierra Morena" (private collection, current location unknown).
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