Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps
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Kehinde Wiley presents a defiant portrait of a young Black man on horseback, identified only by the surname Williams. It wasn’t common until recently to see subjects like Williams depicted in such a monumental way. In fact, the inspiration for this painting is a 200-year-old portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, a significant historical figure. Here, an anonymous Black youth takes Napoleon’s place and is painted with the same sense of magnificence. Although his surroundings are grand, Williams’s camouflage suit, white T-shirt, and Timberlands, as well as his Starter wristbands, forearm tattoos, and white bandana tied around his forehead, are familiar. Unlike Napoleon, Williams feels real—like someone you could, and possibly do, know.
This painting is part of Wiley’s 2005 Rumors of War series and was featured in the Brooklyn Museum’s 2015 exhibition Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic, the artist’s first museum survey show. In 2020, it was exhibited with the original portrait of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David, which emphasized Wiley’s criticisms of race and power. The Museum has a long-standing engagement with Wiley’s work, having organized his first-ever solo museum exhibition in 2004, just three years after he earned his MFA, setting the stage for decades of collaboration.
Object Label
In 2005, Wiley created the <i>Rumors of War</i> series: a group of four monumental paintings, including Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps, depicting military men on horseback. The series responds to the United States’ involvement in the Middle East under the presidency of George W. Bush. The Iraq War, which had begun as a search for weapons of mass destruction, resulted in the capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain and the discovery of incidents of torture and abuse of Abu Ghraib detainees by members of the U.S. Army.<br />
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<i>Rumors of War</i> also includes Wiley’s interpretaton of equestrian portraits by three other iconic European masters: Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), Peter Paul Rubens (1577– 1640), and Diego Velázquez (1599–1660). Unified by their identical gold frames, three of the paintings portray individual mounted subjects, while the fourth, modeled on Le Brun’s <i>Chancellor Séguier</i> (circa 1661), shows the mounted figure accompanied by a procession of six attendants on foot. One of them, a man in military camouflage, also appears in <i>Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps</i>. In each painting, Wiley maintains the sitter’s pose from its source image, but he replaces the background with a decorative motif, creating an ambiguous sense of the subject’s location in space and time. The long tradition of the equestrian portrait plays into Wiley’s fascination with the concept of empire and its association with colonialism, political domination, and the abuse of power that frequently accompanies absolute control. As Wiley explains, “In these paintings . . . I’m demanding that we see and take seriously what heretofore had been considered marginal voices—when the peripheries become the center.”<br />
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"The scale of man to horse is a complete fiction. Men look a lot smaller on real horses. . . . All those grand tableaux that you see on the walls of the Louvre are propaganda. They are designed to complete the narrative of domination of empire and control."<br />
Caption
Kehinde Wiley American, born 1977. Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps, 2005. Oil on canvas, 108 x 108 in. (274.3 x 274.3 cm) frame: 130 1/2 x 121 x 12 in. (331.5 x 307.3 x 30.5 cm) weight: 220 lb. (99.79kg). Brooklyn Museum, Partial gift of Suzi and Andrew Booke Cohen in memory of Ilene R. Booke and in honor of Arnold L. Lehman, Mary Smith Dorward Fund, and William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund , 2015.53. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2015.53_framed_PS2.jpg)
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Collection
Collection
Artist
Title
Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps
Date
2005
Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
Dimensions
108 x 108 in. (274.3 x 274.3 cm) frame: 130 1/2 x 121 x 12 in. (331.5 x 307.3 x 30.5 cm) weight: 220 lb. (99.79kg)
Credit Line
Partial gift of Suzi and Andrew Booke Cohen in memory of Ilene R. Booke and in honor of Arnold L. Lehman, Mary Smith Dorward Fund, and William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund
Accession Number
2015.53
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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