Antonio Canova’s commanding bronze bust of Napoleon (1817-1818) gazes down on visitors as they take their final few steps up to the Prints and Drawings Gallery in the British Museum. The gently tilted head commands the visitor into the exhibition Bonaparte and the British: prints and propaganda in the age of Napoleon. This exhibition marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo which ended Napoleon’s career and nearly twenty-five years of Franco-British hostilities.

The exhibition is far subtler than the title’s binary juxtaposition would suggest. At the entrance the very humanity of Bonaparte is recalled, since on one side there is ‘young general’ and on the other the former Emperor’s resigned death mask. The effect of this is to demystify the figure of Bonaparte that became the mythical ‘Napoleon’ and resituate him within his contemporary context. This reveals not only Bonaparte’s complexity – Revolutionary upstart, military genius, French or foreigner – but also that of France and Great Britain, which are all too often presented as homogeneous national forces.

The Prints and Drawings Gallery is divided into four sections through a semi-partition in the centre, appropriately decorated with the French National Guard regiment flags hung over a chronology of the period and a map of the Napoleonic battles. The variety of prints are mostly presented at eye level, under the sections ‘General to Consul, 1796-1799’, ‘Peace, War, Empire 1800-1804’, ‘Triumph and Disaster: Trafalgar, Austerlitz, Spain and Russia 1805-1813’ and finally ‘Defeat, Exile and Transformation, Elba, Waterloo, St Helena, 1814-1815’. Display cases throughout display matters which traverse the period more generally from ‘Financial Crisis’ to the image of ‘Little Boney’. The combination of the chronological and the thematic complements the exhibition’s aim to establish the dynamism of the period, though crossing between the sections can confuse the flow of the exhibition.

‘General to Consul, 1796-1799’ is dedicated to Bonaparte’s unforeseen rise through the later years of the French Revolution. The fact this was unexpected is shown though the young ‘Buonaparte’ who has no fixed personal image and is often subject to artistic licence and imitation from other prints. However, Bonaparte gains strength through his military campaigns. The Italian campaign is dominated by British caricatures which already show Britain’s internal divisions and Bonaparte’s potential threat. For example, Richard Newton’s Buonaparte establishing French Quarters in Italy from 1797 has a fearsome Pitt muttering “It’s my turn next”. Bonaparte was no absolute leader yet, as the brilliant scatological Bonne fart demonstrates: the British may fear him, but Bonaparte still needs General Berthier. The next campaign is that of Egypt, where the curators have taken pains to underline Bonaparte’s intellectual concerns with the conquest of Egypt and the birth of Egyptology through artefacts as well as prints. Finally, the Egyptian crocodile becomes Consul by quashing the French frogs; although amusing by itself, the panels take care to show this print’s reference to Aesop’s fables here and recall George III’s refusal to cooperate with the new French regime.

The caricatures by the likes of James Gillray and the Cruikshanks continue in the second section. This section navigates the Second Italian Campaign, the Peace of Amiens, and the new threat of France invading Britain, often personified in ‘John Bull’. It starts with serious prints of Bonaparte before returning to caricature, demonstrating the very variety of the medium. This additionally allows for an explanation of the development of colour prints from colouring etchings by hand to the use of different coloured inks on the plate. The technical aspect of printing is continued through a comparison of the print Governor of Europe Stopped in his Career with the pots bearing the reproduced design from 1803. As the exhibition is keen to cover other media of propaganda on multiple registers, the following section covers Napoleonic medals as Napoleon rises to become Emperor.

Crossing the gallery, the next section is filled with battles and their losses, from the funeral of Nelson to the tragedy of the French Russian Campaign. Throughout there is a good mixture of increasingly biting satirical caricature as well as serious, stately etchings. The exhibition shows how prints were commissioned but sometimes fails to highlight the importance of the image at a precise time. For example, Napoleon needed the glorious memory of Austerlitz in September 1813 as his armies faced an increasing threat. The dismantling of the binary of Britain and France is continued through the emphasis on battles such as Leipzig in 1813 which are less familiar today in the British collective imagination. Likewise, there is a great weight on the circulation of prints and how they were developed and copied, epitomised through a German, French and British print of the devil nursing Napoleon from 1814, all three mounted together to show their interconnectivity.

The final section stretches from the collapse of the First French Empire to Napoleon’s death on St Helena. The exhibition remains vibrant in these two final sections through new print themes, either puzzle prints with a key underneath, or a reworking of the Bible. Equally, the watercolour landscapes painted immediately after Waterloo bring home the sheer destruction of this period. The prints dealing with the White Terror and Britain’s ambiguous relationship with Louis XVIII seriously question how much can be reduced to nations and regimes in this period. It is here, too, that the variety of loaned exhibits from prints to battlefield spoils including a soldier’s pay-book and tricolour cockades help illustrate how momentous Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon was. Similarly, these collections expose the role of propaganda on both sides of the Channel in the memorialisation of this era’s figures and events.

In all, this is a very good exhibition, both amusing and reflective. The exhibition catalogue by the curators Tim Clayton and Sheila O’Connell offers much additional information and, of course, the opportunity to consult the prints in more detail. Although the exhibition is very explanatory, there were moments when some of this additional information in the catalogue, especially on propaganda, could have benefited the gallery exhibition. Likewise whilst most of the prints were in English, French text was not often translated in the actual exhibition despite being an essential element of the meaning. In the same vein, although some prints were clearly explained, such as The Corsican Crocodile Dissolving the Council of Frogs from 1799, others missed key references, such as a dagger with the word ‘Talleyrand’ on it. Nonetheless, the exhibition succeeded in addressing not only the time period and its themes, but also the development and diversity of prints, how they were circulated and copied throughout Europe, and their use as a political tool. However, the exhibition’s success also raises questions: having shown quite how important this period was for Franco-British relations, legendary leaders, the cost of war and modern Europe, should the British Museum have dedicated a larger exhibition to this anniversary?

Bonaparte and the British: prints and propaganda in the age of Napoleon is at the British Museum from February 5th to August 16th 2015.