Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier French, 1815 - 1891

Peter Fusco and H.W. Janson, The Romantics to Rodin. French nineteenth-century sculpture from North American collections, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1980, p. 300-1

Overall in good original condition with the usual light wear to patina at high relief. Siot Decauville foundry plug seal lacking to the base. Please note that the Siot-Decauville seal plug lacking to the base. The figure is revolving on its base.
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The present sculpture is one of fifteen executed by Meissonier and cast posthumously at the direction of the artist’s second wife, Elizabeth (née Besançon).  The wax model for this bronze was made in December, 1890, in preparation for his unfinished canvas, The Morning of Castiglione (for which a preparatory oil sketch was on the artist’s easel at the time of his death). Modeled in wax over wire, and often “dressed and saddled up” with cloth, leather and metal, the original sculptures functioned as aides to Meissonier in his near-obsessive desire to render horses in motion with anatomical precision (see lot 100). He was also familiar with photographer Edward Muybridge’s revelatory sequences of horses trotting and running. Meissonier helped spark a public debate in the Gazette des beaux-arts about whether or not the visual effects captured in photographs were appropriate resources for painters. Meissonier’s position in this argument is clear – the knowledge he acquired from Muybridge’s project had a direct impact on his work. 

Links between his painted canvases and sculptures attest to the significance he placed on the interplay between the two. The success of an exhibition of some of his wax models and a limited number of bronze casts persuaded his family to agree to the reproduction of these sculptures by the distinguished foundry Siot-Deceauville, solidifying Meissonier’s reputation as a virtuosic sculptor.