Uniformes de la Garde de sa Majesté le roi de Westphalie c.1810

Description

Three engravings from the book ‘Uniformes de la Garde de sa Majesté Le roi de Westphalie’.
In 1810, the artist, Alexander Sauerweid, produced a series of illustrations on the army of the Kingdom of Westphalen. Most of the images were of the Royal Guard. Apart from the series of Salomon Pinhas, these illustrations represent the most comprehensive contemporary uniform study of the Westphaian Army. There were only 19 illustrations in total.

History & Context

Uniformes de la Garde de Sa Majesté le Roi de Westphalie was produced around 1810 during the brief reign of Jérôme Bonaparte as King of Westphalia. Created for the royal court, the exceptionally rare work records the uniforms of Jérôme’s newly established Westphalian Royal Guard in nineteen finely engraved and contemporary hand-coloured plates. The illustrations have traditionally been attributed to the Russian-born military artist Alexandre Ivanovitch Sauerweid (1783–1844), although a manuscript annotation in one surviving copy states that the designs were by “Colonel Gautier, chef du cabinet topographique,” probably Jean-Rodolphe Gautier, a military draughtsman who entered Jérôme’s service.

The work belongs directly to Jérôme’s ambitious attempt to create the institutions, ceremony and visual identity of a new Napoleonic monarchy. Established by Napoleon following the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, the Kingdom of Westphalia brought together territories across central Germany under his youngest brother. Jérôme ruled from Kassel as Jérôme-Napoléon I, maintaining a royal household, court and guard consciously modelled upon those of the French Empire. The elaborate uniforms illustrated here were therefore more than military dress: they formed part of the imagery through which the new dynasty projected royal authority and its connection with Napoleon’s imperial system.

Additional photographs