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Guillaume Guillon-Lethière: Lucien Bonaparte Contemplating his Mistress

27 September 2021

We are excited to be preparing for Frieze Masters in London, the first ‘in person’ fair we will have participated in since March 2020. We have an exciting group of works we will be exhibiting, amongst the highlights is a truly exceptional painting. Depicting Napoleon’s brother, Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino and his mistress Alexandrine de Bleschamp is one of the most unexpectedly intimate and erotically charged portraits painted in Revolutionary France. It was painted in around 1802 by Guillaume Lethière, Lucien Bonaparte’s protégé, who had been born on the Caribbean Island of Guadeloupe, the son of a white government official and a freed black slave.