The troops rest (peace)

The Troops Rest (Peace), dated 1733 and now in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin as a pendant to The Troops Rest (War), is part of Pater's significant engagement with military subject matter alongside his dominant fête champêtre production. The pairing of war and peace in a decorative ensemble was a long-established tradition in European painting, offering patrons a complete statement about the human condition and the blessings of civil order. In the peace canvas, soldiers idle in a camp — resting, conversing, perhaps celebrating — in a manner that rhymes with Pater's representations of civilian leisure. The contrast with the companion war canvas would have sharpened the meaning of both, making each more legible as a component of a unified philosophical statement.

In the peace canvas Pater allowed himself a lighter, more relaxed compositional arrangement than in the companion, with soldiers distributed across the picture plane in the informal clusters he used in his civilian fêtes. The mood is conveyed through posture and pace: bodies lean against each other, weapons are set aside, faces turn upward or inward in repose.