This picture, so masterly and so dramatic in composition, is assuredly one of the most widely known in existence. The sombre visage of the Emperor, the severity of the landscape, the prevailing tone of sadness, admirably rendered, explain the wide favour enjoyed by this celebrated work, further popularized in engravings.
Besides, with one exception,—The Smoker, popularized by a large printing,—they are quite limited in number, and already eagerly sought after by collectors. And with all the more reason, because, at the fairly distant period of which we speak, the perfected processes for preserving the burined lines on the copper plate in all their original fineness and precision had not yet been invented; accordingly, the later proofs in his series of etchings betray a wearing of the copper which could not fail to lower their value. At the time of Meissonier’s death, a proof of The Preparations for the Duel, in which the signature was legible, “in the lower left corner,” brought upward of one thousand francs.
The most beautiful of all Meissonier’s etchings are, without question: The Violin, which he engraved with a burin at once powerful, delicate and, as some critics phrase it, “vibrant,” to adorn the visiting card of the celebrated lute player, Vuillaume; The Signor Annibale, representing, in braggadocio pose and costume, the celebrated actor, Régnier, of the Comédie-Française, in a rôle that is by no means the least celebrated in Augier’s Adventuress; and The Troopers, seven figures whose personalities stand out rather curiously and exhibit a picturesque diversity.
The Reporting Sergeant was a miniature sketch made, in order to try the ground, on the margin of the plate on which The Smoker was etched. It is a finished and charming little work, full of expression, of life and actuality, condensed into a microscopic square of paper.
But what of his paintings? We left them for a time, in order to clear up certain points regarding Meissonier’s incursion into the realm of the engraver,—an incursion from which he brought back, incidentally, both fame and fortune.
PAINTINGS
He profited from it above all in being able to continue to paint. For the fact remains that, from the time of his youngest efforts, such as The Patrol Removing a Body from an Outpost, his earliest known work, one of the collection that his father bought, to swell somewhat that famous monthly income of fifteen francs, he never abandoned his brushes.
We left him unsuccessfully exhibiting, at the Salon of 1834, a small painting, dealing with a Flemish subject. Let us add, as a final word, that this genre picture was accompanied by an aquarelle, entered in the catalogue of that date as: Soldier to Whom in the Citizen’s House, a Young Girl serves a Mug of Beer. This aquarelle was purchased for one hundred francs by the Society of Friends of Art.
The following year he did not exhibit. This, unfortunately, was not because he had nothing to offer; but the pictures that he sent, consisting of The Chess Players and The Little Messenger, had not been accepted by the jury. There was an excess of severity in this refusal; and in spite of the fact that the candidate for admission was still under the age of twenty, the two pictures offered possessed certain genuine qualities that rendered the sentence of the jury cruelly unjust.