Édouard Detaille
Édouard Detaille was described as the "semi-official artist of the French army," a label very few painters have ever earned. Jean-Baptiste Édouard Detaille was born on the 5th of October 1848 and died on the 23rd of December 1912. In those sixty-four years he became famous for canvases in which every button, strap and rank insignia could be trusted.
How does a painter come to be trusted that much by an army? What does an artist learn when he stops imagining a battlefield and has to stand on one? And why would a great novelist place him among the guests at a high-society party?
Napoleon's soldiers carried weapons supplied by Detaille's grandfather, who worked as an arms dealer for the emperor. The painter inherited that military world as a birthright. He was born in Paris, but he grew up in the region of Picardy, in a prosperous household.
His father was an amateur artist with a wide circle of friends among collectors and painters. One of them was Horace Vernet. The father encouraged his son's early drawing, and that support would soon send the boy to one of the most famous military painters in France.
At seventeen, Detaille approached Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier with a modest request. He wanted an introduction to the renowned Alexandre Cabanel. Meissonier decided instead to take the young man on as his own pupil. From that teacher Detaille absorbed a lasting respect for accuracy and exactness, and Meissonier became the strongest influence on his style.
The Salon of 1867 marked his debut. The Salon was the official exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and Detaille showed a painting of Meissonier's studio. A year later, at the Salon of 1868, he exhibited his first military painting, The Drummers Halt. It came entirely from his imagination of the French Revolution.
Repose During the Drill, Camp St Maur followed in 1869, and with it Detaille established his reputation. In the spring of 1870 he set off on a sketching trip to Algeria with three fellow young painters. They were Étienne-Prosper Berne-Bellecour, Alexander Louis Leloir and Jehan Georges Vibert. War would arrive in France before that year was out.
When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, Detaille enlisted in the 8th Mobile Bataillon of the French Army. By November he was living through the realities of the conflict himself. Soldiers, manoeuvres and uniforms were no longer subjects to be pictured from a distance.
That firsthand experience produced his famed portraits of soldiers. It also gave him the authority to paint historically accurate scenes of marches, drills and daily army life. In time he became the official painter of the battles.
In 1885 he published a book called L'Armée Française. It contains more than 300 line drawings and 20 color reproductions of his works. Detaille would later try to shape the look of the army itself, and not only record it.
In 1912, Detaille designed a set of new uniforms for the French army. The Minister of War never adopted them. Yet the blue-gray greatcoats he had imagined influenced the uniforms French soldiers wore in World War I. The Adrian helmet, too, was heavily shaped by his designs.
Detaille was also a collector. Over his lifetime he gathered an impressive store of military uniforms and artifacts. His curiosity reached beyond the army as well, and he was among the first artists to buy photographs from Eugène Atget.
After his death, he bequeathed the uniform collection to the Musée de l'Armée in Paris. One of his paintings, however, ended up in a different museum and in the pages of a famous novel.
Le Rêve, painted in 1888, shows soldiers asleep on a battlefield, dreaming of military glory. The painting now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Marcel Proust's novel Cities of the Plain brings Detaille into fiction through that canvas.
In Part Two, Chapter One, Detaille appears as a guest at a party at the home of the Princesse de Guermante. The novel calls him "the creator of the Dream." The painting also features in Paintings in Proust by Eric Karpeles, published by Thames & Hudson.
Detaille's name carried on in one more form. His niece married Charles Otzenberger, who afterward called himself Otzenberger-Detaille.
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Common questions
Who was Édouard Detaille?
Édouard Detaille was a French academic painter and military artist, born on the 5th of October 1848 and died on the 23rd of December 1912. He was regarded as the "semi-official artist of the French army."
Who taught Édouard Detaille to paint?
Édouard Detaille studied under the military painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, beginning at age seventeen. Meissonier instilled in him an appreciation for accuracy and precision.
What did Édouard Detaille do in the Franco-Prussian War?
Édouard Detaille enlisted in the 8th Mobile Bataillon of the French Army when the war broke out in 1870. By November he was experiencing the realities of war, which shaped his portraits of soldiers and his accurate scenes of military life.
What is Édouard Detaille's painting Le Rêve?
Le Rêve is an 1888 painting by Édouard Detaille showing soldiers asleep on a battlefield, dreaming of military glory. It hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
How did Édouard Detaille influence French World War I uniforms?
In 1912, Édouard Detaille designed new French army uniforms that the Minister of War never adopted. His blue-gray greatcoats still influenced later World War I uniforms, and the Adrian helmet was heavily influenced by his designs.
Where did Édouard Detaille's collection of military uniforms go?
Édouard Detaille bequeathed his collection of military uniforms and artifacts to the Musée de l'Armée in Paris after his death in 1912.
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5 references cited across the entry
- 1BookPaintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design: 1826-1925David Bernard Dearinger — Hudson Hills — 2004
- 2Edouard Detaille (1848-1912)Artfact — Oxford Art Online
- 3JournalArtNew York Evening Post Company — 2 January 1913
- 4BookAtget. ParisTaschen — 2008
- 5BookHelmets and Body Armor in Modern WarfareBashford Dean — Yale University Press — 1920