Napoleon in the Prison of Nice in 1794

Edward Matthew Ward's Napoleon in the Prison of Nice in 1794 of 1841 depicts a relatively obscure episode in the early life of Napoleon Bonaparte: his brief imprisonment following the fall of Robespierre, when his close association with the Jacobins temporarily made him politically suspect. The subject allowed Ward to engage the enormous British appetite for Napoleonic historical subjects while choosing a moment of vulnerability and uncertainty rather than the triumphant military scenes that dominated French Napoleonic painting. Ward was a productive painter of historical narrative who specialized in documentary-style scenes from British and European history. The Apsley House setting — the London home of the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon's greatest adversary — gives the painting a rich contextual irony as a document of the fallen emperor displayed in his conqueror's residence.

Ward depicts the imprisoned Napoleon with the psychological nuance his subject demands — a young man under arrest but not yet defeated, already marked by the intensity that would define his later career. The prison setting provides dramatic shadow against which the figure is illuminated. The handling is smooth and detailed, typical of Victorian historical genre painting at its most competent.