Appears in exhibition catalog as entry no. [not numbered]
Painted by SCHELLEIN, Professor of the Imperial Academy at Vienna. . . . Napoleon having lost the great battle at Leipzig, retreated with the remnant of his army in the interior of France, where he defeated the allied troops of Austria, Russia and PRussia twice. Having left Orders with his brother Joseph Bonaparte, to hold out Paris, until he, the Emperor, could reach it, he stArts for Paris and arrives at Fontainebleau the 14th March, 1814, after a ride of 14 hours. There he Learns the overwhelming news of the surrendering of Paris, through the treachery of Marshall Marmont. This fact destroys his last effort, his last hope, a world is lost in that moment, and the conqueror of half the globe is a powerless subject of his haughty enemies. This is the moment chosen by the Artist, and he is the only one who succeeded to preserve a perfect likeness of the hero's face in a moment, where it expresses the deepest affliction, overpowering pains and the thousand natural shocks which a world's conqueror is heir to, concentrated in one Downcasting stroke. . . . A fat man (Napoleon was at that period very stout) with dirty boots, thrown in a gilded chair, in deep reflection . . . [who] stares in the boundless space, in the manner of his sitting on the wrong turned chair, the head sunken Down on the bosom, and one arm cramp like pressing in its leanings . . . [P. 8.]
Catalogue of the Napoleon Gallery, now exhibiting at 663 Broadway, opposite Bond-St. New-York: Israel Sackett, Printer, No. 53 Nassau-Street. 1851.
