Omnia Labor

Omnia labor, Latin for "Everything by Work," was the motto by which painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier lived;  he went so far as to have it emblazoned on his crest.

 Friedland (1807), 1875, oil on canvas, 53.5 x 95.5 in.

After twelve years of work on the painting, which included hundreds of studies, wax sculptures, and countless hours spent
observing horses galloping, Meissonier sold Friedland for 380,000 francs (more than $85,000 American dollars) to a
wealthy New York collector.

One day - it was neither in war nor during manoeuvres - on a July morning, with the sun shining radiantly, a squadron of cuirassiers passed at full gallop across a magnificent field of ripening grain, in the neighbourhood of Poissy, although on every side there were wide reaches of fallow land and pasture.

When this hurricane of horses and men had, like a blazing meteor, devastated and laid low the splendid gold of the crops, two men remained behind, surveying the scene with visible satisfaction and undisguised interest.  

One of the two was tall and the other short.  The tall man was Colonel Dupressoir, who had directed the manoeuvre.  The other, an elderly man, short of leg, and ruddy of complexion, with a long beard, white and silken, and a singularly expressive eye, was the painter, Meissonier.  The latter had achieved his object.  Thanks to long insistence and the payment of indemnities, he had brought about the passage of cavalry across that field, in order that he might make studies from nature, needed for a painting then in hand, 1807, of how standing grain looks after it has been crushed and trampled by the onrush of a charge.

The whole artist ...  is summed up in this anecdote.  It reveals one of the most typical sides of his temperament, and consequently, of his talent: a constant and scrupulous endeavour, maintained even at the price of sacrifices that would seem excessive to the layman, to interpret nature precisely as she is.  It was this noble ambition ...  that made him say to his pupils, with a conviction that commanded respect: "If I should sketch a horse from memory I should feel that I had been guilty of an insult to nature!"¹

Meissonier had already been studying charging horses with the help of his son Charles on their early-morning jaunts through the Forest of Saint-Germain.  The pair would take their horses along the wide bridle path leading from Poissy to Maisons-Lafitte, five miles to the east.  "When we thought we had got far enough away and were alone," Charles later recalled, "my father would say to me, 'Make your horse gallop.'  Then, putting his own horse at the same pace, and keeping on the other side of the road, he would study each movement."  Meissonier was attempting to capture, according to Charles, "the rhythm and successive modifications of the horse's action."²

Artists have often gone to great lengths to create images which are faithful to nature, even when their subjects are from long ago, far away, or never really existed in the first place.  In preparation for their paintings, they have amassed costume and prop collections, built maquettes, employed method acting, or have collected vast amounts of research materials, all for the sake of verisimilitude.  But no other artist can lay claim to the supreme effort put forth by French painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier in his attempts to achieve visual accuracy in his work.

The Card Players, 1872, oil on canvas, 12 x 15.75 in.

Meissonier did not begin the actual painting of any of his works until he had first made numerous preparatory sketches and studies.  And he did not begin these until he had worked out the composition of the painting in the most elaborate detail, usually by means of a three-dimensional scale model of the scene.  A number of painters had resorted to this strategy, from Michelangelo, who made wax figurines of many of the characters he painted, to the eighteenth-century English landscapist Thomas Gainsborough, who fashioned tabletop models with sand, moss, twigs, bits of mirror for water or sky, and miniature horses and cows.  But Meissonier, as ever, took matters a step or two farther.  Thus, for The Campaign of France he sculpted in wax a series of highly detailed models, some six to eight inches high, of Napoleon and his generals, as well as the horses on which they sat.  These models he then arranged in his studio on a wooden platform four feet square.  He also made models of tumbrils and wagons, which he proceeded to drag across a muddy landscape -- carefully molded from clay spread on top of the platform -- to create the furrowed road along which Napoleon trekked with his generals.  He prided himself on these creations, considering himself, according to a friend, "by turns tailor, saddler, joiner, cabinetmaker."³

Diderot and his Scribe, 1869, oil on canvas, 14.88 x 9.49 in.

Absolutely nothing was left to chance or imagination;  everything had to be rigorously and impeccably correct.  Meissonier had faced a problem, though, with his tableau vivant for The Campaign of France.  Despite the presence of Napoleon and his generals, this new painting was conceived as, first and foremost, a snowscape:  a panorama in which the Grande Armée plods across a vast expanse of snow beneath a leaden sky.  And since Meissonier would not paint anything without first having the correct specimen before his eyes , he had naturally found himself in need of snow.  So across the expanse of furrowed clay he had sprinkled handfuls of finely granulated sugar and, to give his snow its glitter, pinches of salt.  With a shod hoof, like wise executed in miniature, he then meticulously pressed the imprints of the horses' feet.  The leadership of the Grande Armée was thereby devised in perfect effigy against a snowy landscape.

"What an effect of snow I obtained!" Meissonier had proudly declared when the model was finished.  Unfortunately, the sugar soon attracted the attention of bee's from a neighbor's hive, forcing him to replace it with flour -- which merely served to bring on another invasion of unwanted guests:  "The mice came and ravaged my battlefield," he lamented.  At which point Meissonier decide to stage The Campaign of France on a larger scale, in the grounds of his house at Poissy.⁴ (continued)

The Emperor Napoleon III at the Battle of Solferino, 1863, oil on canvas, 16.9 x 29.9 in.

Work on his full-scale mock-up had begun around the summer of 1861, with elaborate plans and preparations more typical of staging an opera than painting a picture.  Models were hired, costumes sewn, and a white horse, a double for Napoleon's charger, brought to Poissy from the stables of Napoleon II.  Then, to simulate snow, vast quantities of flour were raked across the grounds of the Grande Maison (Meissonier's estate in Poissy) -- so much that at the end of each day Meissonier's models and their horses needed to be de-whitened by a team of servants.  Meanwhile the escort of generals posed on horseback.  The model serving for Marshall Ney -- riding immediately behind Napoleon -- wore his coat draped over his shoulders like a cape, a sartorial detail Meissonier had picked up from a chance encounter in a train carriage with a medic who had served under Marshall Ney at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813.  The coat itself was authentic, since Meissonier had borrowed it, along with the rest of the uniform, from Marshall Ney's son.  The model serving for Napoleon was, of course, Meissonier himself.⁵ (continued)

1814 (Napoleon I), 1862, oil on canvas, 12.75 x 9.5 in.

The seasons changed and, as winter arrived, Meissonier had awaited a fall of snow.  When at last it came, he set busily to work.  The team of servants was ordered to trample the ground and drag heavy carts back and forth through the mud, carving out deep ruts.  The models were once more made to pose on horseback, "not withstanding the bitterly cold weather."  Meissonier made sketches hurriedly for fear of a thaw destroying his wintry scene or an outbreak of bright sunlight interfrring with the cheerless gray sky he had planned for the painting.  For reasons of speed he engaged another model to assume the part of Napoleon and sit astride the white charger;  but unfortunately the young man proved unequal to the task.  "He was a stout young man," Meissonier's son Charles, then eighteen, later remembered, "and the riding coat was too small for the big fellow, while the hat fell over his eyes."  Once again, therefore, Meissonier donned the riding coat and swung into the saddle.  At this point, out of doors in the frigid weather, he really began to suffer for his art.  Concerned friends suggested that he abandon the park for the warmth and comfort of his studio, but Meissonier objected that in order to capture the correct light and atmosphere he needed to se his models set against a backdrop of cloud and snow.⁶ 

A Game of Piquet,  1861,  oil on canvas,  9.5 x 12.7 in.

(In preparation for his masterpiece, Friedland, Meissonier) made small oil sketches of everything from the hooves and haunches of the individual horses to tiny details such as the hat with which Napoleon salutes his troops.  He also began sculpting various of the horses in wax.  These figurines, which stood some eight or nine inches high, were impressive works of art in themselves.  Meissonier twisted wire frameworks into shape, then covered them with pellets of warm beeswax that he proceeded to model with his fingers.  The features of the horses - the flared nostrils, the eyes, even the teeth - were next sculpted with miniature precision, while small leather bridles were fashioned to fit over their heads.⁷

The Sergeant's Portrait, 1874, oil on canvas,  24.41 x 28.74 in.

By the time he was fifty, Meissonier's meticulous nature made him the world's wealthiest and most celebrated painter.  His pictures of 17th and 18th century military and genre scenes, when shown each year at the Paris Salon, were so popular with visitors that a "special policeman was needed to regulate the masses as they pressed forward to inspect his latest success."⁸  For Meissonier, who said he would have been a historian if he could not have been an artist, no undertaking was too great in achieving the exacting detail which so entranced the public, collectors, and critics alike.

Musketeer, 1870, oil on canvas, 9.6 x 5.9 in.

Although Meissonier went to extremes in the execution of his pictures, his example is a good reminder of what labor may be required to make a painting.  In a society which prizes immediacy, the public today thinks that art-making requires talent, but no effort, and that the creation of paintings necessitates no significant time or sacrifice whatsoever.  In the proverbial race to create a work of art, however, talent only gets you off the starting block faster;  hard work is required to win the race.  This is a lesson Meissonier teaches over and again with each of paintings.

Self-Portrait, oil on canvas

Meissonier never hesitated to erase a whole picture when it did not satisfy his inward sense --
customers might praise and connoisseurs offer to buy, it made no difference.
"I have some one who is more difficult to please than you," he would say;
  "I must satisfy myself."⁹

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¹ M. Henry Roujon, translated from the French by Frederic Taber Cooper, Meissonier:  Masterpieces in Colour, (Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, 1912), pp. 11-15.
²  Ross King, The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism , (Walker Publishing Company, New York, 2006),  pp. 217-218.
³ King, p. 28.
⁴ King, pp. 28-29.
⁵ King, p. 29.
⁶ King, pp. 29-30.
⁷ King, p. 139.
⁸ King, p. 2.
⁹ Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys Volume 4:  Homes of Eminent Painters, (The Roycrofters, New York, 1916), p. 133.