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Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier
1815-1891
Seated Cavalier
ca. 1850
Graphite, white chalk, black wash on laid paper.
10 1/2 x 9 7/8 inches (267 x 251 mm)
Gift of Karen B. Cohen.
2022.341
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Notes:
Before becoming Napoleonʼs official painter of military exploits, Meissonier produced genre scenes with figures dressed in eighteenth-century costume. This is one of two large-scale studies in the Cohen gift that is preparatory for a miniature-scale painted composition depicting two men discussing the Siege of Bergen op Zoom, a 1747 maneuver in which the French army captured the Dutch town. This genre scene, for a painting only two inches in diameter, hints at Meissonierʼs ultimate ambition as a military painter.
Provenance:
Paris art market; Jill Newhouse, New York; from whom purchased by Karen B. Cohen, 1987.
Associated names:
Cohen, Karen B., former owner.
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