Przed posągiem Napoleona

"Przed posągiem Napoleona" (1867) translates as "Before the Statue of Napoleon," depicting a figure or figures in contemplation before a monument to Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon held a special place in Polish memory: his campaigns had created the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815), briefly restoring a Polish state after the partitions, and many Poles had served in his Grande Armée with tremendous loyalty and sacrifice, including in the Legions that gave Poland its national anthem. The figure contemplating Napoleon's statue in 1867 — four years after the failed January Uprising and decades after the Emperor's death — is engaged in a specifically Polish act of political memory: honoring a foreign leader who had represented the hope of Polish restoration. The National Museum in Warsaw holds this work on paper, consistent with a smaller-scale, intimate format.

Paper as support suits the intimate scale and exploratory handling appropriate to a scene of quiet contemplation rather than dramatic action. Grottger renders the massive presence of the Napoleon statue in contrast to the smaller human figure before it, using the scale differential to convey the weight of historical memory bearing on the individual. The monument's stone solidity contrasts with the vulnerability of the living figure.