Austrian Veterans

When this small canvas was painted in 1832, the wars against Napoleon had been over for 17 years, and the white-haired soldier at the table could well have fought in them. Four men sit in a vaulted tavern room over glasses of beer. Two of the soldiers smoke long pipes, and above them hats hang on a peg rail, one of them a black cocked hat. The young man in the green jacket is no soldier. A longer version of the title calls him a plaster figure seller, and his basket stands on the floor under a cloth. One of his statuettes has been set on the table among the glasses. Hawkers of cheap plaster casts, many from villages north of Lucca in Tuscany, walked the roads of Europe at the time. Moreau signed at the lower right and wrote the date as 832.