Oscar Rex, painter of the Napoleonic legend

Of Austrian nationality, Oscar REX was born in Graz in 1857. He grew up in Prague and studied in Munich. In 1881, he moved to Paris, where he completed his training in the workshops of Jules Breton and Mihály Munkácsy. A painter for whom history often borders on anecdote, Rex inherited from his first master Julius de Benczur a taste for materials, fabrics, brilliance and from Munkácsy audacious colors and theatricality. Around 1900, he designed around thirty paintings on the salient episodes of Napoleon's life. The Château de Malmaison keeps several of them in its collections, both sober and “talking”, a fine example of the Napoleonic “narrative” which flourished in the 19th century in France but also in Europe.

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