Dernier Pelerinage au Tombeau from Retour en France by Victor Adam 1840

[BONAPARTE, Napoleon] ADAM, Victor; CHAMPIN, Jean-Jacques. Dernier Pelerinage au Tombeau de Napoleon. Paris, Jeannin, [1840].
 
Large folio lithograph, 510 x 355 mm. Blind-stamped. Lithographie par Champin; les figures par V. Adam. Printed by Lemercier, Bernard et Cie. Scattered foxing and toning; marginal marks and handling wear; a few creases to right-hand margin. Good to very good.
 
One of the more atmospheric plates from Adam's suite documenting the exhumation, return, and state funeral of Napoleon in 1840. The plate forms part of Victor Adam's Retour en France des Depouilles Mortelles de Napoleon, a suite of twenty lithographs documenting the Retour des Cendres. The scene depicts visitors making a final pilgrimage to Napoleon's tomb at St Helena shortly before the removal of his remains to France in October 1840. This plate is from the original first edition of the complete series of twenty large-format lithographs issued in Paris in 1840.