The Execution of Marshal Ney

The Execution of Marshal Ney (L'Exécution du maréchal Ney), also titled 7 December 1815, Nine O'Clock in the Morning, is an oil painting on canvas by Jean-Léon Gérôme, shown at the Paris Salon of 1868 and now owned by Sheffield Museums, England.

Michel Ney, whom Napoleon called 'the bravest of the brave', swore loyalty to the Bourbon monarchy after Napoleon's abdication in 1814 but went back to his old commander during the Hundred Days. After the second restoration he was tried for treason and shot in Paris on 7 December 1815; he refused a blindfold and was allowed to give the order to fire himself.

Gérôme shows the moment after the volley. Ney lies face down in civilian clothes in a muddy street, his hat beside him, while the firing squad marches off into the morning fog. On the wall above the body, the words 'Vive l'Empereur' have been crossed out and a second 'Vive' is scrawled beside the bullet marks, which Gérôme intended as a comment on Ney's changes of allegiance. As in his earlier Death of Caesar, the corpse fills the foreground and the killers leave with their backs to the viewer. The canvas measures 65.2 × 104.2 cm.

More than fifty years after the event, the subject still stirred strong feelings. Ney's son, the Prince de la Moskowa, tried to use his connections at the imperial court to keep the picture out of the Salon, but Gérôme refused to withdraw it. Critics were divided: Jules-Antoine Castagnary mocked the dead marshal as a drunk the morning patrol had forgotten to pick up, while Théophile Gautier praised it, and the Salon marked the start of a lasting rift between Gérôme and many French critics. The painting was sold to a British collector in 1887 and presented to Sheffield in 1931.