Original Gouache Drawing on a Plant Leaf (possibly, Saint Helena Redwood), Showing Napoleon Bonaparte’s Tomb in the Valley of the Willows on St. Helena. Ca. 1820s.

Gouache drawing on a plant leaf ca. 16,5x11,5 cm (6 ¼ x 4 ½ in), mounted on a period album leaf ca. 24,5x18 cm (9 ½ x 7 ½ in). A minor crack on the leaf’s top point, paper slightly age-toned, but overall a beautiful drawing in very good condition.

Attractive unusual 19th-century gouache drawing of Napoleon’s first tomb on Saint Helena Island. The ex-Emperor spent there his last years in exile (1816-1821) and died in his residence, the Longwood House, on May 5, 1821. He was first buried in the Valley of the Willows near the Longwood House with full military honours for the rank of general. “The tomb was temporarily covered with a slab. In the days that followed, the grave was filled in with three square metres of cement and sealed with three heavy slabs. The plot was then fenced with an asphalt-coated cast iron railing, the same that had been used to fence New Longwood House. As the French and the English could not agree on the inscription, General Bertrand decided to leave the tomb blank, with no name at all. Lowe then had a sentry box constructed and the tomb surrounded by a fence of asphalt-coated wood, forming a circular enclosure thirty metres in diameter” (Saint Helena Napoleonic Heritage). Napoleon’s body was returned to France and entombed at Les Invalides in 1840.

The drawing shows the tomb site and the nearby cottages, apparently of the Hutt’s Gate. The leaf the drawing is made on, possibly belongs to the Saint Helena redwood tree (Trochetiopsis Erythroxylon), an endemic Saint Helena plant, now extinct in the wild (a limited number of plants exists in cultivation). Overall a beautiful, unusual drawing of Napoleon’s tomb on Saint Helena.