1814, The Campaign of France

Meissonier worked on this panel from about 1860 to 1864, under Napoleon III, the first Emperor's nephew, whose regime kept the Napoleonic legend carefully polished. He chose an unflattering moment for it, the winter of 1814, when the Allied armies were pushing into France and the Empire had weeks left. Marshal Ney and Berthier ride among the staff behind the grey overcoat. For accuracy Meissonier borrowed Napoleon's own saddle from the Bonaparte family and posed in a copy of the overcoat himself. The banker Gustave Delahante bought the picture in 1866 for 85,000 francs. In 1890 it passed through a dealer to Alfred Chauchard, founder of the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store, for 850,000, ten times as much and then the highest price paid for a work by a living painter. Chauchard left it to the Louvre in 1909.