ASK Brown Military Collection: Photographs of Napoleon's Veterans
Some of the earliest photographs of veterans are a series of fifteen original sepia views of members of Napoleon's army taken when these old soldiers were well into their 70's and 80's. It is not known how Mrs. Brown acquired them. They measure 12' tall by 10' wide and are mounted on stiff card. At some time in the 20th century, the name of each veteran and his regiment was inscribed in pencil on the verso of each.
These remarkable photographs provide probably the only surviving images of veterans of the Grande Armee and the Guard actually wearing their original
uniforms and insignia, although some of the uniforms have obviously been recut by tailors of the 1850's. Each is a formal portrait of an individual gentleman photographed in a studio. Some of the men stand in front of a blank or paneled wall on a elaborately decorated carpet, while others are seated. One old veteran who appears to have lost his right eye, Monsieur Loria of the 24th Mounted Chasseur Regiment and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, stands against a piece of furniture that appears also in other portraits by a curtain. It is not known who the photographer was and the blurring on one or two suggests the difficulty aging subjects had in standing still for several seconds while the plates were exposed.
No comments:
Post a Comment