Nations fell and armies were conquered, but one person always
kept Napoleon Bonaparte in her thrall: the Empress Joséphine

Words: Joanna Hunter

OFTEN DEPICTED AS a consummate seductress
and profligate spender, Napoleon’s consort,
Joséphine de Beauharnais, was a Martinique-born,
impoverished aristocrat who had narrowly
escaped the guillotine during the French
Revolution. She was also, when General Napoleon
Bonaparte met her, a widowed mother of two.
But marriage to Napoleon was to make her the
most powerful woman in France.

Joséphine used her position to indulge her passion
for the arts, amassing a collection that would come
to symbolise both her husband’s many victories and,
ultimately, when it was sold on to the Russian Tsars,
his resounding defeat. It is part of that collection which
is now on loan from the State Hermitage Museum
in St Petersburg to London’s Courtauld Institute.

The collection began with a ‘gift’ of 70 works
looted from the Electors of Hesse-Kassel in what is
now modern-day Germany. The paintings were meant
for the Louvre Museum in Paris, but the general who

headed the campaign intervened and sent them
directly to Joséphine instead, thereby currying
favour with both her and Napoleon. Inspired, the
Empress, whom leading sculptor Antonio Canova
described as a patron of “exquisite and enlightened
judgement”, launched herself into her new role
with characteristic abandon. By the time she died,
the Malmaison Collection – which was named after
the couple’s favourite country retreat which used
to house it – had grown to some 350 paintings,
a remarkable collection of antiquities, and the finest
collection of Canova sculptures in all of France.

Although their marriage was the stuff of pure
romance, the Empress’s inability to give Napoleon
an heir led to an amicable divorce. She was left both her title and a
generous allowance, but without an empire to back her,
Joséphine was unable to pay for her extravagance. In 1814, with Napoleon in exile, Joséphine
once again sought the protection of a powerful man. This time she looked to an overseas power: Russia.
She befriended Tsar Alexander I – ironically one of the men responsible for her ex-husband’s downfall. When
Joséphine died only a few months later, the Tsar made good his promise that he would assist her
family and bought a large part of the collection. He thereby relieved Joséphine’s children of their
mother’s three million francs (£4.5m today) worth of debts. The works were then shipped to St
Petersburg and installed in the Imperial Hermitage, both a symbol of Russia’s victory over France and
homage to the late Empress.

Treasures on display at the Courtauld Institute
include ‘the Gonzaga Cameo’, dated at around the
third century BC, ‘Dancer’ by Canova, and items
from her 200-piece dessert service, commissioned
from prestigious Parisian firm Dihl & Guérard.

‘France in Russia: Empress Joséphine’s
Malmaison Collection’ runs until 4 November
at the Hermitage Rooms, Courtauld Institute,
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2; + 44
(0)20 7845 4630, www.hermitagerooms.org.uk