The Traveller

Circa 1850, clearly influenced by Daumier, his Parisian neighbour on the Ile St Louis island where they both lived, Meissonier turned his attention to sculpture and used it as a stage in the painstaking preparation for his painted works. And this obsession for detail was to be for him his route to glory. One of Napoleon III's favourite painters, Meissonier was to be adulated right to the end of his life for the almost photographic realism of his small genre works and his military paintings.

Of the twenty or so known preparatory sculptures, of which most are of horses or riders, that shown here is the most remarkable. Variously titled – The Traveller, A rider in the wind, Napoleon in Russia, Marshal Ney, The retreat from Russia, and Empire Officer in a storm -, it is not entirely clear quite what this statuette represents. Nevertheless, the piece is clearly part of Meissonnier's preparation for his cycle of pictures on Napoleonic subjects, and although it cannot be linked to a specific painting, it would appear that this rider struggling against the weather goes with the famous work French campaign, 1814, with its desolate scenery and the emperor and his staff facing up to appalling weather.

Here the artist used ochre-tinted beeswax to create this forcefully expressive equestrian figure group. The officer and his steed are clearly struggling hard against the elements. As a keen observer of nature, Meissonier pays enormous attention to the musculature of the horse, the effect of the wind on the position of the rider and his saddle, and the flapping cape. The spontaneity of the execution and the naturalism of the group show the artist as one of the great animal sculptors of the 19th century. Indeed, when these small models were first shown to the public after Meissonier's death, they were so enormously popular that they were produced in bronze and widely sold.
 
Karine Huguenaud (tr. P.H.)

October 2002