1805, Cuirassiers Before the Charge

"1805, Cuirassiers Before the Charge" belongs to Meissonier's sustained project of reconstructing the Napoleonic era through painstaking historical research and technical virtuosity. The year 1805 was Napoleon's annus mirabilis — Austerlitz, Trafalgar, the reorganisation of Europe — and the cuirassiers were among the most fearsome heavy cavalry in the Grande Armée, their breastplates and helmets reflecting the desperate optimism of a military empire at its peak. Meissonier painted the work in 1875, the same year as his great "Friedland" canvas, suggesting a sustained period of Napoleonic meditation following France's catastrophic defeat by Prussia. The Condé Museum at Chantilly, with its extensive holdings of French military and history painting, is the appropriate setting for a work that studies French military glory with the ambivalence of someone who knew what came after.

The cuirassiers' polished steel armour presented Meissonier with one of the most demanding technical challenges in his repertoire: surfaces that reflect the entire environment around them in constantly shifting highlights. He solved this through extraordinarily refined glazing over a carefully prepared ground, building up the metallic sheen through dozens of thin layers. The horses are studied with the same obsessive accuracy as in all his major equestrian works.