Una carica di corazzieri

Napoleon had died on Saint Helena in 1821 and the Bourbons were back on the French throne, which did nothing to dampen the appetite for pictures of his battles. Through the 1820s there was a steady market for them in Paris, and Horace Vernet built a career on it. Géricault went back to the subject he had started out with. His first Salon success, in 1812, was a mounted officer of the imperial guard, and here, about 10 years on, French heavy cavalry are wrenching a regimental standard out of the hands of Russian infantry. The canvas is small, 38 by 46 centimetres. He was ill by then, worn down by a series of falls from horses, and he died in January 1824 at 32. The 4th Marquess of Hertford bought this in Paris in 1857, which is how it came to London.