ERNEST MEISSONIER

(1815 Lyon – Paris 1891)

Charging Cuirassier Study for 1807, Friedland

(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Oil on panel

39,5 x 29,5 cm

Monogrammed EM at the lower right

1866

Wax seal from the Meissonier sale on the reverse of the panel

Provenance: Sale of Meissonier’s studio, Galerie Georges Petit, auctioneers Chevallier and Duchesne, 12–15 May 1893, lot no. 63, sold for 7,900 francs (cf. last page) ; Private Collection.

Literature: Catalogue of the Meissonier Studio Sale, May 1893, no. 63, p. 19: [trad]”Charging Cuirassier. Upon his sleek brown steed galloping, with eyes blazing, the cuirassier, head bent, raises his saber and joins with all his might his cry to the acclamation greeting the Emperor. This is the study that served, in the painting 1807, for the cuirassier placed prominently in the front rank.”

Born into a family from Lyon, Ernest Meissonier demonstrated a certain talent for drawing from a very young age, although his father preferred to steer his son towards commerce. Nonetheless, he joined the Parisian studio of the painter Léon Cogniet around 1833–1834, where he developed a precise painting technique and discovered history painting, a genre in which he excelled from the 1860s onwards, earning wide acclaim for his military scenes.

The first phase of Meissonier’s career mainly consisted of genre scenes, depicted on small panels or canvases. Strongly influenced by the 17th-century Dutch school, he portrayed moments of daily life from past centuries with great spirit, extreme meticulousness, and historical accuracy—particularly in terms of costumes—including chess players, tobacco smokers, a bibliophile reader, and the sharing of a glass of wine around a priest’s table.

Although modest in size, the painter’s genre scenes quickly sparked considerable enthusiasm, as reflected in the artist’s rapidly rising market value from 1841 onwards. Praise from critics and recognition from both his peers and patrons led the State to commission his first official work in 1859, under the influence of Charles Blanc, Director of the Fine Arts. The National Archives even preserve a note (F21-98) concerning the artist’s success:

[trad] “Mr Meissonier is a man whose remarkable talent is now widely recognised in the art world. His small paintings rival the finest canvases of the Dutch masters, yet the Luxembourg Museum, which is intended to house the masterpieces of living painters of our school, does not possess a single work by Mr Meissonier.”

Thus, the painting Napoléon III at the Battle of Solferino (Musée de Compiègne) was delivered five years later for the notable sum of 20,000 francs. The painter’s success and wealth enabled him to commission the construction of a magnificent private mansion between 1874 and 1877 in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, at 131 Boulevard Malesherbes. This vast building was demolished in 1894 and replaced by rental apartments.

From the 1860s onwards, Meissonier became a prominent figure of the Second Empire—receiving, for instance, the rank of Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour—and focused increasingly on creating military scenes, both paintings and sculptures. Some of his sculptures were modelled specifically to capture the movement and volume of the musculature of the horses that populated his battlefields.

Our oil on panel was executed in the same spirit. It is a study for one of the cuirassiers in the front rank, middle right, of one of the painter’s most remarkable compositions: 1807, Friedland. The artist, marked by unprecedented meticulousness, produced numerous studies to best capture the figures and their mounts in the opening moments of the charge. Considered a history painter, Meissonier is renowned for the rigour with which he depicted costumes, which he collected passionately. His commitment was also evident through the testimonies he gathered from veterans of the Napoleonic wars to recreate the scenes he painted with the greatest possible fidelity.

Unlike the polished surface the painter typically employed in his genre scenes, which convey a sense of comfort and stillness, our study reveals a particularly lively and energetic brushwork. One can appreciate the ease and pleasure with which Meissonier uses colour without preliminary drawing, as a form of liberated expression necessary to capture the vigour and fury inhabiting the rider and his mount in a dynamic surge. While the artist produced other studies of cuirassiers and hussars (such as the guides chasseurs on the left of the MET painting), ours is one of the few to present the figure and his horse in their entirety and with such completion. The cuirassier’s breastplate gleams strikingly, offering a vivid contrast between this central source of light and the imperial blue of the costume’s sleeves. The blood-red sash echoes the chestnut coat of the mount, painted with fluid strokes that skillfully balance an aesthetic of incompleteness with areas left in reserve.

This preparatory work stands as a vivid testament to the pictorial explorations of one of the most important French artists of the nineteenth century. Although, towards the end of his life, Meissonier was sometimes considered an overly academic painter—Manet notably remarked of 1807, Friedland that “everything is iron, except the cuirasses”—he nevertheless imposed his refined and meticulous touch, his thoughtful and measured compositions, and the narratives revealed by his works, in the face of the avant-garde artistic revolutions of his time.

Our panel encapsulates both the expression of his relentless pursuit of historical accuracy and his mastery over equine movement, realised through a swift and uninhibited painting technique rarely seen in the artist’s oeuvre. Finally, this study marks one of the milestones in the creation of a major work, purchased in 1875 by Alexander T. Stewart, an Irish-American commerce magnate based in New York, for the staggering sum of 300,000 francs—making 1807, Friedland one of the most expensive paintings ever sold at the time.