User:Lord Cornwallis/The Gate at Clichy

The Gate at Clichy (French: La Barrière de Clichy) is an 1820 history painting by the French artist Horace Vernet. It depicts the scene at the Clichy gates on 30 March 1814 during the Battle of Paris near the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Paris, capital of the French Empire was attacked by forces of the Sixth Coalition.

It was commissioned by the silversmith Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot who worked a number of times for the former emperor Napoleon, and the patriotic tone of the picture reflects the Bonapartist views he shared with Vernet. Odiot, a colonel in the National Guard, is himself depicted along with General Moncey who is issuing orders to try and prevent Russian forces from attacking a

The last-ditch attempt to defend Paris was unsuccessful and ended with the Abdication of Napoleon.

Vernet tried to present the work at the Paris Salon in 1822 but it was refused, possibly as it was out of keeping with the spirt of the Bourbon Restoration that had replaced Napoleon. During the July Monarchy Odiot donated the painting to the public. From 1837 it was at the Musée du Luxembourg before being acquired by the Louvre in 1874.

Vernet went on to depict many historic scenes of the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras alongside works set after the Bourbon Restoration.


 * Laclotte, Michel & Cuzin, Jean Pierre. The Louvre: Paintings. Editions Scala, 2002.
 * Harkett, Daniel & Katie Hornstein. Horace Vernet and the Thresholds of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture. Dartmouth College Press, 2017.