An episode from the retreat from Russia, 1812
Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts
It was the Romantic generation, the ‘children of their time’, brought up on nostalgia for the Napoleonic epic, who took to painting the disaster of the retreat from Russia. Charlet, a pupil of Gros’s and best known for his lithographs, presented this poignant and intensely dramatic canvas at the Salon of 1836. Here we are shown the remains of the Grande Armée, directionless, anonymous soldiers, gradually sinking beneath a snow storm. Musset, astounded by the picture, wrote: “This is man in his wretchedness, alone under a darkening sky, earth frozen solid, without a guide, without a leader, completely faceless – this is despair in the desert”.