For a universal history he drew figures of Isaiah, St. Paul, and Charlemagne, besides almost numberless ornamental letters and headings of chapters. Of course he longed for more remunerative work, for fame; but he must plod on for months yet. He worked conscientiously, taking the greatest pains with every detail.
His first picture, exhibited in 1833, when he was twenty-two, called "The Visitors," an interior view of a house, with an old gentleman receiving two visitors, all dressed in the costume of James I., admirable for its light and shade, was bought by the Society of the Friends of Art, for twenty dollars. Two years later he made illustrations for the Bible of the Sieur Raymond, of Holofernes invading Judea, and Judith appearing before Holofernes. For "Paul and Virginia" he made forty-three beautiful landscapes. "They contain evidence of long and careful work in the hot-houses of the 'Jardin des Plantes,' and in front of the old bric-a-brac dealer's stalls, which used to stand about the entrance to the Louvre. And how admirably, with the help of these slowly and scrupulously finished studies, he could reproduce, in an ornamental letter or floral ornament, a lily broken by the storm, or a sheaf of Indian arms and musical instruments."
In 1836, his "Chess Players," two men watching intently the moves of chess, and "The Little Messenger," attracted a crowd of admirers. Each sold for twenty dollars. He had now struggled for six years in Paris. It was high time that his unremitting and patient work should find approval. The people were amazed at so vast an amount of labor in so small a space. They looked with their magnifying glasses, and found the work exquisite in detail. They had been accustomed to great canvases, glowing colors, and heroic or romantic sentiments; but here there was wonderful workmanship.
When the people began to admire, critics began to criticize. They said "Meissonier can depict homelike or ordinary scenes, but not historic." He said nothing, but soon brought out "Diderot" among the philosophers, Grimm, D'Alembert, Baron Holbach, and others in the seventeenth century. Then they said he can draw interiors only, and "on a canvas not much larger than his thumb-nail." He soon produced the "Portrait of the Sergeant," "one of the most daring experiments in the painting of light, in modern art. The man stands out there in the open by himself, literally bathed in light, and he makes a perfect picture." Then they were sure that he could not paint movement. He replied by painting "Rixe," two ruffians who are striving to fight, but are withheld by friends. This was given by Louis Napoleon to the Prince Consort.
Meissonier also showed that he could depict grand scenes, by "Moreau and Dessoles on the eve of the battle of Hohenlinden," the "Retreat from Russia," and the "Emperor at Solferino." Into these he put his admiration for Napoleon the Great, and his adoration for his defeated country. In the former picture, the two generals are standing on a precipice, surveying the snow-covered battle-field with a glass; the trees are bending under a strong wind, and the cloaks of the generals are fluttering behind them. One feels the power of this picture.
In painting the "Retreat from Russia," the artist borrowed the identical coat worn by Napoleon, and had it copied, crease for crease, and button for button. "When I painted that picture," he said, "I executed a great portion of it out of doors. It was midwinter, and the ground was covered with snow. Sometimes I sat at my easel for five or six hours together, endeavoring to seize the exact aspect of the winter atmosphere. My servant placed a hot foot-stove under my feet, which he renewed from time to time, but I used to get half-frozen and terribly tired."
He had a wooden horse made in imitation of the white charger of the Emperor; and seating himself on this, he studied his own figure in a mirror. His studies for this picture were almost numberless,—a horse's head, an uplifted leg, cuirasses, helmets, models of horses in red wax, etc. He also prepared a miniature landscape, strewn with white powder resembling snow, with models of heavy wheels running through it, that he might study the furrow made in that terrible march home from burning Moscow. All this was work,—hard, patient, exacting work.
It had now become evident to the world, and to the critics as well, that Meissonier was a master; that he was not confined to small canvases nor home scenes.
In 1855 he received the grand medal; in 1856 he was made an officer of the Legion of Honor; in 1861, a member of the Institute; and in 1867, at the International Exhibition, he received the grand medal again. When the prizes were given by the Emperor, the "Battle of Solferino" was placed in the centre of the space cleared for the ceremony, with the works of Reimers, the Russian painter, Knaus of Prussia, Rousseau, the French landscape-painter, and others. This painting represents Napoleon III. in front of his staff, looking upon the battle "as a cool player studies a chess-board. On the right, in the foreground, some artillery-men are manœuvring their guns. The corpses of a French soldier and two white Austrians, torn to rags by some explosion, show where the battle had passed by."
Meissonier's paintings now brought enormous prices. His "Marshal Saxe and his Staff" brought eight thousand six hundred dollars in New York; the "Soldiers at Cards," in 1876, in the same city, eleven thousand five hundred dollars; in 1867, his "Cavalry Charge" was sold to Mr. Probasco of Cincinnati, for thirty thousand dollars; and the "Battle of Friedland," upon which he is said to have worked fifteen years, to A. T. Stewart, of New York, for sixty thousand dollars. Every figure in this was drawn from life, and the horses moulded in wax. It represents Napoleon on horseback, on a slight elevation, his marshals grouped around him, holding aloft his cocked hat in salutation, as the soldiers pass hurriedly before him.