Long Live The Emperor! Charles Richefeu 1868-1945

Circa 1920 for the model head. Height: 30 cm, Width: 17 cm, Diameter: 5 cm.

Every artist has their preferred area, the particular themes they like to explore. Charles Edouard Richefeu is no exception. For him, it's the Napoleonic period. He sculpted with great success portraits, figures of soldiers of the First Empire, with strong and expressive features, as well as military groups with striking realism, lively movements, and lines that are at once clear, vigorous, and supple. As the critic Raymond Sélig wrote in his article on the Salon des Artistes Français, published in the Revue du Vrai et du Beau (October 10, 1924): "His sincere talent, with its vibrant sensitivity, creates works of highly communicative emotion. (...)" A passionate servant of his art, a consummate technician, a sensitive, original, and genuine artist, Charles Richefeu is one of our most remarkable and interesting sculptors. This Old Guard soldier of the Imperial Guard acclaiming his Emperor is in fact a reproduction of one of the figures from a group sculpted by Charles Richefeu.
This group represents the charge of the First Grenadier Regiment of the Imperial Guard, the most illustrious of all the Grenadier regiments. The artist created it in 1913.
It is kept at the Army Museum, Turenne Room.
Long live the Emperor! Can't we hear him, our Old Guard soldier, shouting at the top of his lungs with heart and conviction, in a voice made hoarse by the pipe (meaning the pipe... in Old Guard slang!) sucked on at every bivouac, and perhaps also by some strong liquor, "Long live the Emperor!!!" "To celebrate victory or frighten the enemy before the charge." COPYRIGHT