PLATE VII.—AMATEURS OF PAINTINGS
(In the Musée du Louvre)
This picture, which must not be confused with the Amateurs of Paintings, in the Musée Cluny at Chantilly, is nevertheless a replica of the latter. They are differentiated by a few insignificant details, but they resemble each other in the harmony of the grouping and the truth of the attitudes.
“I have seen my Quarrel at Secretan’s. I looked at it as though I had never seen the picture before. Well, do you know, it is really a fine thing!”
MILITARY PAINTINGS
Mention should be made, before passing on to the military paintings, of just a few other genre paintings: The Reading at Diderot’s, The Amateurs, The Flute Players.
But it is the military pictures that loom up largely amongst the artist’s prolific output:—1807, the portrayal of the Imperial Apotheosis, the army passing by at a gallop, eagerly acclaiming the Emperor, as he answers with a salute; 1814, the decline, the retreat from Russia; 1815, the cuirassiers of Waterloo before the charge. This picture, which formed part of the Duc d’Aumale’s collection, was purchased for 250,000 francs, but afterwards twice resold: the first time for 275,000 francs, the second for 400,000 francs.
Yet it may be said that the artist fully earned what some of these military paintings brought him. Although he mounted successively all the rungs of official honours (he was made Knight of the Legion of Honour at the age of thirty, Officer at forty-one, Commander at fifty-two, received the grand golden medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1855, and became a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1861), Meissonier nevertheless always led a singularly active and industrious life. Not only did he paint a prodigious number of pictures (in 1886, four hundred were already catalogued), but he took part in the Italian campaign of 1859 and in the Franco-Prussian war!
In 1859 he was, at his own request, attached to the Imperial Staff of the French army, dreaming, as he had himself acknowledged, of becoming “the Van der Meulen” of the campaign. At all events, he got out of it one of his best canvases: Napoleon III. at Solférino, which never left the Musée du Luxembourg until it was transferred to the Musée du Louvre.
He himself has related, with a delightful sense of humour, the machiavelian intrigues to which he resorted in order to secure the Emperor’s consent to pose. For the idea of painting a figure, and especially the central figure, without a sitting, was a heresy that he could not even contemplate. Let us hear his own account: