Through Redaction Saint-Germain
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To celebrate the year of Napoleon in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, an Imperial city, the Municipal Museum is presenting this month the exhibition Napoleon and Egypt: From Expedition to Description. “As part of Heritage Days, we wanted to tell a real story,” says Alexandra Zvereva, responsible for municipal collections.
The City has the first so-called “imperial” original edition of the “Description of Egypt”, an absolute masterpiece of printing. The work consists essentially of the “Description of Egypt” in 23 volumes, and the “Birds of America” in 4 volumes. Volumes of texts and plates in two very large formats, 80 cm and over a meter high. The entire work is presented in this exhibition, most of the volumes of plates are presented open allowing them to be admired sheet by sheet. Those not shown are reproduced on the wall.
An extremely rare work
In the first part of the exhibition, engravings retrace Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt, with all the major battles, Aboukir, the revolt in Cairo, with a very didactic background to tell this expedition in detail.
The second part is the scientific adventure, and all that led to the publication of the “Description of Egypt”. The Egyptian antiquities presented here are authentic pieces dating back several millennia in the Municipal Museum. They come from the collection of Louis-Alexandre Ducastel, Saint-Germanois founder of the Municipal Museum. “It’s a collection built between the 1810s and 1830s,” says the collections manager. Louis-Alexandre Ducastel fell in love with this culture, and it is quite possible that the “Description of Egypt” that the city possesses comes from him. “
The work was published between 1809 and 1829, subscribers received notebooks as and when they were published, and therefore had to wait 20 years to be able to bind the work. The copy presented here is complete, which is extremely rare, it is of the same quality as those kept in the National Assembly and the Senate.
Louis-Alexandre Ducastel gave the City a large number of works for the constitution of the Municipal Museum, so that it benefits all Saint-Germanois. At the end of the year, the Museum will devote an exhibition to this fascinating, extremely modest character, acting mayor of the City in 1835 and 1839 at a time when the latter was going through serious internal crises.
The birth of a real orientalism
Another part of the exhibition is devoted to Egyptian antiquities. It is indeed this expedition to Egypt that discovered Luxor, Karnak, all these temples that we had no idea about before, then it is modern times, where the expedition described the Orient of the time. “This is the first time that Western culture had such a precise knowledge of the Eastern world,” assures Alexandra Zvereva.
A whole material has arrived with extreme precision which then sparked the birth of this Orientalism which is not an Orientalism dreamed of like the Odalisques of Ingres, but a real Orientalism, rather of landscapes. The museum was fortunate to benefit from an exceptional loan of three paintings by the Parisian Gallery Ary Jan specializing in paintings from the 19th century. “
Jehan-Jacques Peyre
Espace Paul-et-André-Véra, 2, rue Henri-IV. Last days: September 22 to 26, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Free entry.
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