The troops rest (war)

The Troops Rest (War), dated 1733 and paired with The Troops Rest (Peace) at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, represents the harsher dimension of military life as a contrast to the idyll of the companion canvas. In the war canvas Pater presumably depicted the activity, movement, or aftermath of combat — horses in motion, figures engaged in urgent action, a different spatial energy from the relaxed camp scene of the peace pendant. The pairing of war and peace as decorative ensembles was a respectable Baroque and Rococo tradition that allowed aristocratic patrons to demonstrate their awareness of the costs of conflict while enjoying images of controlled military power. Together the two Berlin canvases form one of Pater's most explicitly philosophical contributions to French Rococo painting.

The war canvas would typically require a more dynamic compositional approach than its peaceful companion — greater value contrast, more urgent diagonals, faster brushwork in the figure and animal groups. Pater was less naturally suited to military action than to social leisure, but the commission to produce complementary war-and-peace panels required him to extend his technical range considerably.