Empress Eugénie and the Prince Imperial at the park of Camden Place

James Tissot's 1874 painting of Empress Eugénie and the Prince Imperial at Camden Place, Chislehurst, documents the poignant exile of the Bonapartist court in England following Napoleon III's defeat and the collapse of the Second Empire. Eugénie and her son had taken refuge at Camden Place in Kent, where she lived until the Prince's death in the Zulu War in 1879. Tissot, himself an exile from France since the Commune, had a particular affinity for the displaced French aristocracy in England, and this painting carries the melancholy of a court in waiting — fashionable setting, impeccable dress, but the grandeur of empire reduced to an English country park.

Tissot combines his characteristic attention to fashionable dress and setting with a compositional openness that allows the park's gentle English scenery to surround the imperial figures. His paint handling is precise and lustrous on the clothing, looser and more atmospheric in the parkland background, with warm afternoon light unifying the scene.