The Battle of Austerlitz, 2nd December 1805

Gérard painted this in 1810, five years after the battle, on a commission meant for the ceiling of the room where Napoleon's council of state met, a victory kept overhead while the empire governed. The moment he chose is not the fighting but just after it. The French general Jean Rapp, still bloodied, rides up to present Napoleon with a captured enemy, Prince Repnin, who had led the Russian imperial guard. Around them wounded men try and fail to cheer. The low winter light is the famous sun of Austerlitz that broke through the fog on that December morning in 1805. Decades later, after the empire had fallen, King Louis-Philippe hung the canvas in a new gallery of battles at Versailles, where French history was being arranged for visitors to walk through.