The Charging Chasseur

1812

Oil on canvas, 349 × 266 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris

A mounted officer of Napoleon's Imperial Guard rides into battle smoke with his sabre drawn. At its first showing, the catalog identified the sitter only by the initials M. D.

Shown at the Salon of 1812–13, then renamed A Hussar Charging when it returned to the Salon in 1814.
Look at the rider glancing back over his shoulder while the horse lunges the other way.
The smoky sky and ground are brushed in loosely, leaving the detail to the uniform and harness.
Energy wins over order: horse and rider are built on a steep, twisting diagonal, caught mid-turn, instead of the steady, balanced pose of earlier equestrian portraits.
Kept by the artist until his death, then owned by the duc d'Orléans, later King Louis-Philippe.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)