page_title: Bonaparte, First Consul
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Bonaparte, First Consul / Background
context_page_description: Bonaparte, First Consul is an 1804 portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The painting is now in the collection of the Curtius Museum in Liège. Posing the hand inside the waistcoat was often used in portraits of rulers to indicate calm and stable leadership.
context_section_description: On 1 August 1803 Bonaparte stopped in Liège for two days on his triumphal march across the nine annexed départements. On the terrace of a hôtel particulier on the Mont-Saint-Martin, Bonaparte contemplated the city, criticising the église Saint-Jean-en-l’Isle, ordering a bell tower (which it still lacked) for the new cathédrale Saint-Paul and approved the siting of the fort de la Chartreuse. A large crowd (the city's population having tripled during the two days of the visit) gathered to acclaim Bonaparte and some even knelt in his path.
  The city's head of state met Bonaparte in the Amercœur quarter, which had been devastated by Austrian bombardment on leaving the city in 1794 after the battle of Sprimont. Deeply impressed by the inhabitants' misery, Bonaparte decreed 300,000 francs to the prefect of Ourthe, baron Micoud d'Umons, for the suburb's reconstruction. The same evening, Bonaparte told the Second Consul "I am extremely content at the spirit of the inhabitants of Liège". To show his satisfaction, Bonaparte announced his intention to offer the city of Liège a portrait of him by Ingres, which would be sent to them a year later.  Ingres—who had made his debut at the Salon the previous year—thus became one of five artists (the others were Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Robert Lefèvre, Charles Meynier, and Marie-Guillemine Benoist) who were commissioned to paint full-length portraits of Napoleon to be distributed to the prefectural towns of Liège, Antwerp, Dunkerque, Brussels, and Ghent, all of which were newly ceded to France in the 1801 Treaty of Lunéville.
caption: The cathédrale Saint-Lambert in Liège in 1780
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