The Prince Imperial

The Prince Imperial


A carte-de-visite portrait of the Prince Imperial, showing him at about the age of three, sitting aside a wooden hobby horse, with another alongside. The martial pose and the toy sword at the boy’s waist were intended to be read as a reference to France’s glorious military past, as well as the Napoleonic dynasty’s bellicose foreign policy.

Photographed by André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri (1819-1889), who took many portraits of the Prince during his childhood. The Museum of the Second Empire at Compiègne has a sketch, done by the young Prince Imperial, in Disdéri’s studio, showing the photographer under his camera cloth taking a photograph of the Empress Eugénie.





 


Code: 122673
© Paul Frecker 2024