Passage du Cortege Funebre de Napoleon from Retour en France by Victor Adam 1840

[BONAPARTE, Napoleon] ADAM, Victor; BICHEBOIS, Jean-Baptiste. Passage du Cortege Funebre de Napoleon sur le Pont de la Concorde. Paris, Jeannin, [1840].
 
Large folio lithograph, 510 x 355 mm. Blind-stamped. Dessine d'apres nature et lithographie par Bichebois et V. Adam. Printed by Lemercier, Bernard et Cie. Occasional light spotting and a few isolated marks, but a very good example overall.
 
One of the plates from Victor Adam's Retour en France des Depouilles Mortelles de Napoleon, the celebrated suite documenting the exhumation, return, and state funeral of Napoleon in 1840. The scene depicts the funeral cortege crossing the Pont de la Concorde on 15 December 1840 during the vast ceremonial procession through Paris following the Retour des Cendres. The accompanying caption notes that representatives from all eighty-six departments of France were present, carrying ceremonial standards borne by decorated non-commissioned officers selected from the army to attend the imperial funeral rites.
 
A dramatic scene showing cavalry, military standards, crowds, and ceremonial architecture assembled around the Place de la Concorde during one of the defining public spectacles of the July Monarchy. From the original first edition of the complete series of twenty large-format lithographs issued in Paris in 1840.