Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier
| Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
21 February 1815 Lyon, France |
| Died | 31 January 1891 (aged 75) Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | Painting, Sculpture |
| Movement | Academic art |
| Spouse(s) | Emma Steinhel |
Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier (21 February 1815 – 31 January 1891) was a French Classicist painter and sculptor famous for his depictions of Napoleon, his armies and military themes. He documented sieges and and was the teacher of Édouard Detaille.
Meissonier enjoyed great success in his lifetime, and was acclaimed both for his mastery of fine detail and assiduous craftsmanship. The English art critic John Ruskin examined his work at length under a magnifying glass, "marvelling at Meissonier's manual dexterity and eye for fascinating minutiae".
Meissonier's work commanded enormous prices and in 1846 he purchased a great mansion in Poissy, sometimes known as the Grande Maison. The Grande Maison included two large studios, the atelier d'hiver, or winter workshop, situated on the top floor of the house, and at ground level, a glass-roofed annexe, the atelier d'été or summer workshop. Meissonier himself said that his house and temperament belonged to another age, and some, like the critic Paul Mantz for example, criticised the artist's seemingly limited repertoire. Like Alexandre Dumas, he excelled at depicting scenes of chivalry and masculine adventure against a backdrop of pre-Revolutionary and pre-industrial France, specialising in scenes from seventeenth and eighteenth-century life.
Ernest Meissonier was born at Lyon. His father, Charles, had been a successful businessman, the proprietor of a factory in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, that made dyes for the textile industry. He expected Ernest, the eldest of his two sons, to follow him into the dye business. Yet from his schooldays Ernest showed a taste for painting, to which some early sketches, dated 1823, bear witness. After being placed with a druggist in the Rue des Lombards, at age seventeen, he obtained leave from his parents to become an artist. Following the recommendation of a painter named Potier, himself a second class Prix de Rome, he was admitted to Léon Cogniet's studio. He also formed his style after the Dutch masters as represented in the Louvre.
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