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A SET OF TEN WATERCOLOURS DEPICTING SCENS FROM THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN OF 1812

each 21 by 30cm., 8 1/4 by 11 3/4 in.

three signed in Latin l.r.; two signed in Latin l.m.

watercolour and gouache over pencil on paper

Quantity: 10

NOTE

Albrecht Adam was a world-renowned and highly regarded painter of battle scenes and horses. In 1809 Adam took part in the campaign against Austria as a henchman of the Bavarian Major General, the Duke of Froberg-Montjoye. The same year he was summoned to Milan and appointed court painter by Eugene de Beauhernais, the Italian viceroy and stepson of Napoleon I. Adam lived in Milan until Napoleon began his campaign against Russia three years later and accompanied Eugene de Beauhernais as a military painter. After the burning of Moscow Adam returned to Milan and in 1815 he followed Eugene de Beauhernais to Munich. At his request Adam painted a diary of the Russian campaign with 83 scenes in oil on paper.

The ten offered watercolours were probably part of a more extensive documentation of the Russian campaign and possibly executed in connection with Adam's lithographical work entitled Voyage pittoresque et militaire de Willenberg en Prusse jusqu' à Moscou fait en 1812 which was published in Munich in 1827.

On the 10^th of June 1812 at the headquarters of the 4^th Corps of the French army in Willenburg Eugene de Beauhernais gave Adam a leather portfolio bearing his name "~to use as a pictorial diary of the campaign". Albrecht Adam promptly started working on his travel sketches, which he later adapted for Voyage pittoresque. On the following day, the 11^th of June he drew his first sketch on which the first watercolour in the offerd lot Quartier-Général à Ordelsburg was based.