He has the appearance of someone who has just returned from combat, while he also wears his uniform of colonel of the horse grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, with his grey frock coat.

It illustrates a scene of isolation of the Emperor described by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne at his Mémoires.

[6] The subject had already been addressed by Delaroche's father-in-law, Horace Vernet, in his painting Les Adieux de Fontainebleau (1825).

[7] The painting was acquired by the German art collector and merchant Adolf Heinrich Schletter from the artist himself.

He would become the patron of the Museum der bildenden Künste, in Leipzig, due to his gift of French artworks, in 1858.