Johann Eduard WOLFF (1786 - 1868) French and German school of the early 19th century. Head and shoulders portrait of Emperor Napoleon 1st, right hand in his waistcoat, in the uniform of a colonel of the foot grenadiers of the Imperial Guard wearing the insignia of the Legion of Honour and the Iron Crown. Oil on canvas signed and dated: "Wolff 1815". Height: 82 cm - Width: 64 cm. (Restorations) Biography : Johann Eduard WOLFF (1786 - 1868) Portrait painter of the German school. Pupil at the Berlin Academy from 1800, where he exhibited from 1804 and became a member in 1819. In 1805, he joined the studios of Jacques-Louis DAVID and Antoine GROS in Paris, where he remained until 1816. Historical background: This previously unpublished representation of Emperor Napoleon I on his return from Elba should be seen in the French political context of 1815 and compared with contemporary portraits of King Louis XVIII. The return of the Bourbons to France, after 23 years of exile, took place in a country ravaged by war and torn between the aspirations of monarchists to regain their place on the throne and Frenchmen attached to the gains of the Revolution. François Gérard, in his first portrait of King Louis XVIII, painted in 1814, depicts an elderly monarch (58 years old), seated, in coronation robes, fabrics and feathers, emphasising the roundness of his physiognomy. After the first abdication, the army remained essentially made up of soldiers and officers from the First Empire, who saw their pay cut and veterans' leave reduced, while the return of costly honorary battalions made up of émigrés from the Ancien Régime nobility was approved. (King's Musketeers, Guards of the Porte, etc.). On 1 March 1815, aware of the army's discontent, Napoleon I landed on the Golfe-Juan with a few loyal followers... Johann Eduard Wolff, who had joined David's studio at the start of the Empire and was working with Baron Gros in 1815, perfectly represented the hopes of this return. The Emperor appears full of youth, serene, with a confident gaze, wearing the simple uniform of Colonel of the Foot Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard that led him to so many victories, close to his soldiers.