Episode from the retreat from Russia, 1812

It was the Romantics, the children of their time, who fed off the nostalgia for the Napoleonic epic and who for the most part painted the disaster in Russia. Charlet, a pupil of Gros's bets known for his lithographs, presented at the Salon of 1836 this intensely dramatic and poignant painting. Here we see the remains of the Grande Armée, a headless army, falling ever deeper, weighed down by snow. Overwhelmed by this painting Musset was to write: “This is human wretchedness, alone beneath a leaden sky, on the frozen ground, without guide, without leader, without distinction, this is despair in the desert”.  K.H. tr. P.H.