The Traveler (1886)

Ernest Meissonier: The Traveler (Marshal Ney on Horseback Fighting Against the Wind)

The Seine at Poissy (1884)

Ernest Meissonier: The Seine at Poissy

The Siege of Paris (1884)

Ernest Meissonier: The Siege of Paris

At the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Ernest Meissonier sketched out an initial idea for a painting that would symbolise the Siege of Paris. He would only take this up much later, finishing the work in 1884. His vision combines reality and allegory. The figure of Paris - represented by Madame Meissonier, draped in a black veil and a lion skin, in front of a tattered French flag – rises above the ruins of a barricade. Above her, in a sky of billowing clouds of ash and unfolding tragedy, the spectre of famine hovers over a Paris destroyed by fire.

All around, in a scene of confusion, dead and dying soldiers lie stretched out on the palm leaves of martyrdom. With his characteristic, highly detailed realism, Meissonier describes each face, each detail of clothing. Collapsed against the personification of Paris, the painter Henri Regnault, lies dying. He was killed at the age of 27 during the second battle of Buzenval in January 1871. He symbolises a young generation full of promise, decimated by the conflict.

Although defeated, the uninjured soldiers continue to fight. They can be seen on the left of the painting loading a cannon and sounding the charge. Finally Meissonier evokes the suffering of civilians through a few scenes observed with compassion: an old man looks for his son amongst the bodies, a woman shows her husband their dead child, another woman cries over the body of her husband.

The defeat had a profound and long-lasting effect on France at the end of the 19th century. This trauma explains why, for many years, the 1870 war was a common theme in art, and remained popular with the public. Like other painters, sculptors and writers, Meissonier glorifies the spirit of sacrifice and heroism of his compatriots, in a conscious desire to increase national feeling and prepare for revenge. [Musée d’Orsay]

The Cuirassiers Before Their Charge at the Battle of Austerlitz (1878)

Ernest Meissonier: The Cuirassiers Before Their Charge at the Battle of Austerlitz, 1805

Friedland (1875)

Ernest Meissonier: 1807, Friedland

This work, the largest and most ambitious painting by an artist renowned for meticulously rendered cabinet pictures, evokes one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s greatest victories. Meissonier made hundreds of preparatory studies for it, including drawings and sculptural models. He conceived the picture as part of a cycle of five key episodes in the life of the Emperor, only one other of which was completed: The Campaign of France—1814, an image of defeat (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The present work gained notoriety in 1876, when the American department store magnate Alexander T. Stewart purchased it from the artist, sight unseen, for the then astronomical sum of $60,000. [Metropolitan Museum]

The Two Friends (1874)

Ernest Meissonier: The Two Friends

The Sergeant's Portrait (1874)

Ernest Meissonier: The Sergeant's Portrait

The Barricade (1871)

Ernest Meissonier: The Barricade, rue de la Mortellerie, June 1848

Ernest Meissonier has painted a Paris scene observed after a barricade was taken by the National Guard during the workers' riots in June 1848. Meissonier's painting is based on realistic observation. Known for his minutely detailed Ancien Régime genre scenes, the painter has here created his masterpiece.

The corpses of rioters, together with the cobblestones that form the remains of a barricade, lie like dummies who have lost their limbs in the center of a Paris street lined with old houses. Ernest Meissonier painted this picture after a watercolor done at the scene on June 25, 1848, during the workers' riots. These events made for a troubled beginning to the Second Republic, a few months after the February 1848 revolution. The painter, a captain in the National Guard who was sympathetic to the government, painted the scene that lay before him after a barricade had been taken near to the town hall. The painting is highly original in comparison with another depiction of a barricade, Liberty Leading the People (July 28, 1830) by Delacroix (1831, Musée du Louvre), celebrating the revolution of 1830. There is no pretension to allegory here, no pompous rhetoric. It is the most powerful image to emerge from the events of 1848.

The picture is extremely realistic, Meissonier having painted every part of the canvas, the cobblestones as well as the rioters, with the same attention to detail. Unlike historical paintings generally, the work seems to portray a scene observed without comment or message. Although it depicts a historical event, it is a work that is more akin to genre paintings, particularly on account of its small size. It has recently been interpreted by an art historian as a warning to future rebels. Indeed, the artist's impassive reaction to the horror in front of him may well express the hostility of his own social class, the bourgeoisie, toward the underprivileged. [The Louvre]

Diderot and His Scribe (1869)

Ernest Meissonier: Diderot and His Scribe

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment. Diderot's literary reputation during his lifetime rested primarily on his plays and his contributions to the Encyclopédie; many of his most important works, including Jacques the Fatalist, Rameau's Nephew, and D'Alembert's Dream, were published only after his death. [Wikipedia]

The End of a Game of Cards (1865)

Ernest Meissonier: The End of a Game of Cards

Two gentlemen in Louis XIII attire have fought a fatal duel over a game of tarot. One lies dead with his head resting on an overturned chair and the other, clasping his chest, expires in the background. Strewn across the floor are the cards with the two swords and three coins visible in the right foreground. The setting is actually Meissonier's richly furnished studio at Poissy. This picture illustrates Meissonier's mastery of foreshortening and his ability to express dramatic action in a miniature scale. [The Walters Art Museum]

Ernest Meissonier (1864)

 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]

Napoleon I in 1814 (1862)

Ernest Meissonier: Napoleon I in 1814