An investment made in understanding art now, can rake in dividends in future

By Subir Roychowdhury
From a relatively unknown and low profile pharmacist to a painter of immeasurable recognition – this, in short, is the story of Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier. He was born in a conservative French family and much to his father’s displeasure took to painting at an early age. His range is kaleidoscopic but it is as a painter of military themes that Meissonier won phenomenal renown. He was the first French artist to be awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. Fame and fortune ran after him and in private life, he deservedly moved in a circle that comprised men and women of arts and letters. His principal works include among others: ‘Napoleon I and his staff’, ‘A cavalier (Louis XIII)’, ‘Portrait of Colonel Felix Massue’ and ‘The General and his Aide-de-Camp’.

Beyond their subtle and meticulous craftsmanship, Meissonier’s pictures are accurate and significant as illustrations to history. In the picture entitled ‘1814’ (Louvre, Paris), the spectators are straight away plunged into a scene of turbulent and tumultuous drama. The month is March, Napoleon has just lost control over Soissons, checked at Laon and his hastily regrouped army is in retreat. The Germans under the command of Schwarzenberg are already in France. Prussia has mightily and magically resurrected itself from the ruins of 1807 and now Marshal Blucher is demanding his pound of flesh which is nothing less than the Emperor’s head.

Napoleon has been battling ceaselessly over the last seventeen blood soaked years and the series of wars has cost him of his finest soldiers. The hero of Toulon, the invincible captain of legions and above all, Europe’s “king of kings”, now slowly but surely moves to his fall. One can see the Emperor on his white Arabian horse with his depleted army following him in a long, quiet cavalcade. With each retreating step the silence is growing louder and deafening. One can also spot General Nay ‘the bravest of the brave’ at once, with gold embroidered velvet red saddle, close behind his leader in the snow-covered terrain.

Napoleon has, at last, realised that if war has its chivalry and its pageantry, it has also its hideousness and demoniac woe. He has perhaps learnt his lessons not through success but through misadventure. The face of the Corsican is a perennial enigma where men may read strange matters. What desperate chimeras of future triumphs? Will the wheel of fortune spin and turn to dazzle? Can the Emperor strike back?

Al Contrario, is Napoleon somehow, foreseeing the lurking and lengthening shadows of Elba? Is he pre-visualising the unbearable ignominy of the impending Waterloo? Is he having a premonition about his final voyage on board HMS Northumberland to St. Helena? And finally, is he coming to terms with the inevitability of destiny? To his ardent admirers the suspense is mortifying. Meissonier knows history truly well and his erudition is masterly. Every detail of the scene, the characters and their costumes – all are painted to perfection.

This painting is neither a Raphael nor a Rembrandt but the artist has most certainly captured a poignantly dramatic moment from the pages of early 19th century history.