1814

This panel at the Walters Art Museum, also dated 1862, is a variant or close variant of the famous "1814, La Campagne de France" composition at the Musée d'Orsay — a practice not unusual for Meissonier, who sometimes made replicas of his most successful works for different collectors. The 1814 subject — Napoleon leading his depleted army through snow-covered France in the final campaign — was one of his most emotionally significant Napoleonic compositions, and collector demand for it would have made a high-quality variant commercially viable. The Walters collection, assembled by Baltimore's most ambitious art collectors in the second half of the nineteenth century, acquired this panel as a prime example of Meissonier's Napoleonic series.

Panel variants produced by Meissonier for different collectors maintain the same level of finish as the primary version — he did not produce inferior replicas. The compositional arrangement may differ slightly in details, scale, or the number of figures, but the technical standard remains constant. The muted winter palette of grey-white snow, grey sky, and the dark mass of the troops moving through the landscape is reproduced with the same documentary precision.