Francis Marshall

Artist: Francis Marshall
Medium: Pen and Ink Wash on Board
Size: 22" x 14" (550mm x 350mm)
Date: 1975
Description: Countess Marie Walewska, (7 December 1786, Brodne - 11 December 1817, Paris) was a Polish countess. In 1806, aged twenty and married to Count Athenasius Walewski, she met French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and became his mistress.
The relationship continued through Napoleon's divorce and remarriage to Marie Louise of Austria. Napoleon acknowledged Marie Walewski's son, Alexandre Joseph Colonna-Walewski, born in 1810, as his illegitimate child.
In 1816, after Napoleon's defeat and the death of her first husband, Marie Walewski remarried Philippe Antoine d'Ornano. She died during childbirth in 1817.