MANUFACTURE VELAY in Paris. "The French in Egypt: the battle - Lot 168

MANUFACTURE VELAY in Paris. "The French in Egypt: the battle of Heliopolis". Four strips of panoramic wallpaper, mounted on canvas on a four-leaf folding screen. Circa 1820 (Size (sheet): 197 x 60 cm) (several tears, restorations and missing parts). Lé 1 : An infantry drummer drinks from a bottle, his dog at his side and two other figures including a Merveilleuse in front of a portico. Lé 2: A wounded soldier is being treated by a surgeon, assisted by a comrade and a grenadier. At his side are two food sellers, two dromedaries loaded with crates and a horse. Lé 3: The wounded are evacuated, with a 4-horsed ambulance in the background. Lé 4: A hussar in red pants engraves the inscription "Le 20 mars 1800, 10 000 Français commandés par le brave Kléber ont vaincu 80 000 Turcs dans les plaines d'Héliopolis". In the lower part of the strips, the same sea battle scene is repeated, in reserve in a surround of acanthus leaves and foliate scrolls. These four strips were part of a panorama comprising 30 strips. A complete copy of this panoramic was offered in situ at auction in July 2023. Printed around 1820 at the Château de Varces in the Dauphiné region, this wallpaper had a Bonapartist connotation. Château de Varces, owned by the Vitteau family from 1802 onwards, and then by the Ducruy family through marriage until the present day, is located some ten kilometers south of Grenoble. While Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt may have been a military failure, this panorama offers a very different version, highlighting the birth of French Egyptology. The panorama was undoubtedly seen at the time by two illustrious figures in the field of Egyptology: Joseph Fourier, the Napoleon-appointed prefect of Isère, who took part in Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, and wrote the preface to the monumental "Description de l'Egypte"; and Jacques Joseph Chapollion-Figeac, then librarian of the city of Grenoble, whose family lived nearby. The panoramic paper of the Château de Varces features an obelisk signed at the top by the designer of this décor, Deltil. (Cf. sale July 19, 2023, Osenat, Fontainebleau, lot 272) The original edition of this set was presented by the Velay factory at the 1819 Exposition des Produits de l'Industrie Française under the name "Bataille d'Aboukir".