Petit poste de Grand'Garde, 8e Hussards en 1803

"Petit poste de Grand'Garde, 8e Hussards en 1803" depicts a small cavalry outpost of the 8th Hussars in the early Consulate period, when Napoleon was First Consul and the French military was reorganising after the revolutionary wars. The Grand'Garde was a system of forward pickets posted in front of an army's main position, and the intimate scale of a "petit poste" — a handful of men and horses — gave Meissonier the compressed, human-scale composition he most excelled at. Painted in 1869 and now in the Musée Massey at Tarbes — appropriately located in the foothills of the Pyrenees, near the heartland of French cavalry tradition — the work demonstrates his ability to find in small military scenes the same historical intensity as in his large battle paintings.

The intimate scale of a cavalry picket scene allowed Meissonier to deploy his finest technique without the compositional challenges of large battle panoramas. Individual horses and hussar uniforms are rendered with the specificity of a collector who owned the actual period equipment. The light — presumably overcast northern European daylight — is diffused and consistent, allowing the colour of the blue hussar jackets and the grey horses to read clearly.