Private Collection

Painted for "The Body Clothed in Art" - All proceeds of the auction sale went to the Chelsea Arts Club Trust and AGBI 22nd February 2012 - Chelsea Arts Club London

A revisiting of the Lilliputian paintings from Whitechapel in the 90s where larger grandiose paintings were appropriated into a smaller format and modified for humorous effect. This is based on the original painting "Portrait of Napoléon Bonaparte, The First Council" by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres 1804.
Here Napoleon has been reimagined as an artist at their easel, complete with palette in hand.

In the lower right hand corner of the painting is a red, blue and yellow motif that was used by Furr at the time in connection with his identifier "Pientello".

On the back of the painting is written a poem by Christian Furr and Ged Adamso. The poem, was intended as a slightly satirical manifesto about the role of Art in Society, and was created in the style of a Victorian hymn. An invented composer named as ‘Edmund Powes Mills 1872’

‘Man No More Ye Slumber

To rise afeared no longer
To grasp the sword long slept
To wake the soul and conquer
All earthly torments kept

To soothe the toiling native
His labours small though be
With painted wonders raise him
And tame forever he

To rise afear'd no longer
To grasp the sword long slept
To wake the soul and conquer
All earthly torments kept

Let us prepare a heavenly balm
For eye and darken'd mind
Upon our sorrows, gently calm
And temporal wounds to bind.

To brave the throng in number
Arm'd but with song and prose
Man no more ye slumber
Hold fast and face thine foes.

To enter fields of battle
To pierce both head and heart
To save mankind and all its woes
With tender strokes of Art

From the hymn 'Man No More Ye Slumber' by Edmund Powes Mills 1872’