Scène Avec Cavalier Au Loin Dans La Forêt. Edouard Detaille. Gouache Sur Carton 57 X 82.5 cm

Frame and cardboard mounting on the original canvas. 19th century.

A Gifted Talent
Born in 1848 into a close-knit bourgeois family, Édouard Detaille, the eldest of eight children, showed early artistic talents in drawing. "He was a prodigy," notes François Robichon. At thirteen, he had an astonishing mastery of hand and a phenomenal sense of composition. His father, who was connected to Horace Vernet, encouraged him. At seventeen, after passing his baccalaureate, he joined Meissonier’s studio. This encounter, which led to mutual affection, spared Detaille from the academic detour of the École des Beaux-Arts. Instead of dictating a strictly "official" art, Meissonier, at the height of his glory, traveled with his students, introducing them to the nuances of Titian, Rembrandt, and Rubens in Brussels and Lille.
In 1867, the Paris of "free trade" ruled the world through the technical revolutions of the Exposition Universelle, and the charming young man with a striking presence discovered the salon of Princess Mathilde and the theater of Dumas fils. He even approached the Empress, noting in his journals, "Not bad, the Empress." This observation encapsulated all of Detaille: he had no doubt about his talent, cultivated flair, enjoyed the company of beautiful women, and intended to conquer circles of power without sacrificing his freedom.
From childhood, he had listened to his calling: "Before I even knew my letters, I imagined the subjects of battles, the names of famous generals, the arms of officers and soldiers, through the images I admired in the books of Norvins and Laurent de l'Ardèche." He frequented collectors and certainly wouldn’t have missed the military review on the Champs-Élysées for an Empire! His first painting exhibited at the Salon in 1868, "The Halt of Drummers," was praised by critics who immediately recognized "a remarkable truth of observation and simplicity of effect." The purchase of this work by Princess Mathilde, cousin of Emperor Louis-Napoleon, made Detaille, at just twenty, a coveted celebrity known by figures like Sainte-Beuve, Théophile Gautier, the Goncourt brothers, and Flaubert. The young artist’s humanistic vision contrasted sharply with the compositions of his predecessors. His works depicted soldiers in maneuvers, contemplative and resigned as they awaited the looming war.
The Vision of the Combatant
The Siege of Paris, where he nearly lost his life in 1870, and the death of two of his brothers in that defeat darkened his outlook. From 1871 onward, Detaille no longer concealed the cruelties of war: German sharpshooters mowed down by machine guns, cuirassiers and panicked horses caught in ambush, fields plowed by shells littered with dead animals. The unvarnished tragedy: "It is an absolute fact that no painter until now has represented as it is a battlefield covered with the dead," commented Jules Claretie. "The corpses fallen there still retain, in their icy rigidity, the semblance of life." Detaille's testimony on the devastating defeat, the catastrophic effects of the first total war in history, was not a celebration of heroism but a lamentation, a "lesson in darkness." "From the war, which was once considered the supreme effort of human genius, we see only melancholy and horrors," remarked a writer in front of his paintings.
"Detaille experienced the fire of war young, during a conflict that bore the seeds of the two world wars of the 20th century," explains François Robichon. "With a strong concern for realism, Detaille paints war from the perspective of the combatant. He introduces a humanity and a critical lucidity about the evolution of warfare." With an incredible intensity, Detaille captured the violence and the power of new weaponry like machine guns. By the time he was not yet thirty, he had become the chronicler of those years of pain. He exhibited what a critic described as a "lifelike portrait of modern war" that the French—civilians and soldiers—had experienced up close. He embodied a humiliated youth eager for revenge. Yet this scrupulous artist also remembered, in his vast landscapes, the lessons of Corot and Courbet. Manet was not far off. "I would not want my art to be reduced to mere patriotic art," he asserted. "One system I often use and love a lot is to execute the landscape first, very effective, very detailed, very tight, from nature..." Within him, the advice of Meissonier still resonated: "Do as I do; nature, always nature!" Detaille was so close to this surrogate father that after living on Rue Legendre from 1872 to 1875, he had a private mansion built at 26 years old, starting in 1874, next to his master’s studio at 129 Boulevard Malesherbes, on a 425 m² plot purchased from the Pereire family. He even chose the same architect as Meissonier: Paul Boesvilwald. A bachelor and an incorrigible seducer, the painter entertained his conquests, notably Valtesse de la Bigne, amid his collections. He had built his studio in the courtyard.
A Diplomatic Actor
As Detaille's fame grew, his hotel on Boulevard Malesherbes soon became the place where foreign princes, politicians, and heads of state mingled, and where Juliette Adam, the muse of Léon Gambetta, gave him wise advice. Thus, the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, formed a genuine friendship with the painter. "This fervent patriot, a friend of Déroulède, was extraordinarily open to the world," recounts François Robichon. "He acquired, in just a few years, considerable social, cultural, and international stature. Welcomed at Windsor, at the English Court, he was an intimate of Tsar Alexander III and a close friend of Félix Faure."
In this capacity, Detaille was a decisive actor in the Entente Cordiale signed in 1904 between England and France, the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894, and thus in the Triple Entente among the three powers. An engaged witness of his time—associated with the birth of the "Ligue des Patriotes" with Alphonse de Neuville and Déroulède, founder of "La Sabretache" and initiator of the Army Museum—Detaille was not blinded by his convictions. He was not indifferent to the discreet tributes that Wilhelm II and the Kronprinz paid him through diplomatic channels. Like Barrès, he had placed his hopes in restoring a symbol tarnished by Sedan: the French army.
Beyond this choice, he was a man turned toward modernity. "Informed by the best sources, he was at the center of European life," observes François Robichon. Knowledgeable about the potential of photography, he was one of the first in the 17th arrondissement to have electricity and a telephone installed, to drive a car, and to attend the Lumière brothers' cinematograph sessions in 1896. He even considered filming a historical movie. In this sense, he was a precursor. His stunning war panoramas—Champigny and Rezonville—long takes created with Alphonse de Neuville on Rue de Saussure near the Porte d'Asnières anticipated the historical cinema of Abel Gance, the naturalism of John Ford, the frescoes of Andrei Tarkovsky, and the emotional power of Apocalypse Now. Did Abel Gance not draw his Napoleonic epic vein from Detaille’s paintings? Detaille had envisioned painting beyond the frame, capturing both the entirety and the details of the cathartic upheaval of war. He pushed the traditional boundaries of his profession to pave the way for the major art of the 20th century: cinema. Dying on December 24, 1912, at his home on Boulevard Malesherbes, he received quasi-national funerals at the church of Saint-Charles-de-Monceau on December 27. A company from the 28th Infantry Regiment, whose new uniform he had designed, presented arms. The Prime Minister, Raymond Poincaré, bareheaded, walked behind the family. Today, François Robichon, who has sensitively and passionately revived the painter's fate, is fighting to save his grave at Père Lachaise.