print;
satirical print;
broadside
- Museum number
- 1873,0712.906
- Title
- Object: Corporal Violette.
- Description
-
Illustration to a printed broadside with a woodcut border: Greek key-pattern in white on black. A copy of No. 12510, enlarged. The text begins: 'When Buonaparte was on the eve of leaving France, ... he said to some of his adherents, "that he would return in the Violet season. . . ." Those partisans who were in the secret, of his return to France from his seclusion, wore a Violet flower at their breasts; carried one of the above prints about their person; and always drank at their meetings, to the health of "Corporal Violet".' The 'Examiner' of 26 Mar. quotes the 'Morning Chronicle': 'Corporal Violet (meaning Bonaparte) is the favourite toast of his partisans in France.' Napoleon learnt after his return that violets had become a Bonapartist rallying sign: Queen Hortense ('Memoirs', 1926, ii. 170) explained 'that, after he had gone, the soldiers always said he would come back when the violets bloomed and that. . . they always referred to him as Père la Violette. This made him laugh heartily.' See De Vinck, No. 9397. Several versions of the puzzle picture were sold in London, four called 'Corporal Violette' are listed by Broadley, who transcribes a hand-bill 'Corporal Violette Just received from Paris Several Hundred Copies of "the above celebrated Print". . . . Price One Shilling'. Such flower designs had a great vogue also in 1813. Other violet designs: 'Les Fleurs du Souvenir' and 'Bouquet chéri', reproduced Simond, 'Paris', i. 252, 253; 'Le retour du printemps et de la Violette', and 'Le Lys et la Violette', reproduced Bourguignon, ii. 260, 268. For earlier prints with concealed profiles cf. Nos. 8474, 11749. See also Nos. 12511, 12513, 12537, 12541, 12544, 12563, 12586, 12605.
c. March 1815
Hand-coloured etching with letterpress text and a woodcut border.
- Production date
- 1815
- Dimensions
-
Height: 145 millimetres (plate)
-
Height: 347 millimetres (sheet)
-
Width: 110 millimetres (plate)
-
Width: 193 millimetres (sheet)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
Broadley, ii. 92. (De Vinck, No. 9401, is a similar plate published by R. Pratt, price '1s'.)
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1873
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1873,0712.906