Ernest Meissonier: Emperor Napoléon III at the Battle of Solférino
Ernest Meissonier: The French Campaign, 1814
This painting—in a small format rather unusual for a painter of military history—indicates Meissonier's taste for seventeenth-century Flemish and Dutch painting and demonstrates his nimble, polished style. Despite its smallness, the vast expanse of desolate plain and leaden sky give breadth to the scene as does the dilated perspective around the central figure of the Emperor magnified by a slightly low angle. The least details are minutely recorded: Napoleon's sprouting beard, the veins on the horse's legs, the snow dirtied by the marching troops... the Director of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Charles Blanc, said that Meissonier "painted grandly in a small size". The artist applied the same meticulous approach, but as a historian this time, to his preparatory research: he collected abundant documentation, questioned many eyewitnesses and tried unsuccessfully to borrow the Emperor's grey coat. [Musée d’Orsay]
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