Adaptation and layers of influence in Napoleonic silhouette-ghost prints

Abstract

During the 1830s, a collection of unusual prints of Napoleon Bonaparte began to appear throughout France and Europe. Their strangeness derived from the fact that, although they honored the memory of the Emperor and can be described as images of him, he does not appear in the works directly. Instead, he takes the form of a blank space. These prints, which this study will refer to as “ silhouette-ghost prints, ” depict the island of St. Helena. Viewers are shown a fi ctionalized version of Bonaparte ’ s grave, where mourners weep at the gravestone as the sun sets in the distance. Despite the melodramatic nature of this subject matter, the most striking characteristic of the prints is the con fi guration of tree trunks, branches, and twigs that create an outline of the Emperor. During the Bourbon Restoration (1815 – 1830), such hidden images of the Emperor were often used to evade censorship, for the carefully hidden silhouettes often took time to detect and allowed Bonapartists to collect images of their idol while evading government scrutiny (Kroen 2000, 190 – 191). However, the silhouette-ghost prints appeared after 1830, when King Louis-Philippe lifted censorship of Napoleon ’ s image and even actively promoted it (Marrinan 1988, 158 – 164). For this reason, their use of the silhouette form likely is not meant for political subterfuge. Other works, known as puzzle prints, used hidden silhouettes as brainteasers for their audiences. Certain of these, especially depic-tions of Lord Byron, closely resemble the silhouette-ghost prints (Jones 2008, 22). Here again, however, the prints diverge from a likely model. For even in the most subtle examples, the Emperor ’ s form is usually obvious and even fi guratively highlighted through the use of captions or titles. The prints ’ use of the silhouette form to honor Napoleon ’ s memory, then, requires elucidation. We